2. 450 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
protection crises a decidedly ambiguous place. Though the bulk of its
report focused on the international community’s responsibility to react to
crimes of mass atrocity, the commissioners nevertheless called on the
international community to ‘close the gap between rhetorical support for
prevention and tangible commitment.’1 Recognizing that ‘preventive action
is founded upon and proceeds from accurate prediction’, it included among
itsspecificrecommendationsacallfor‘moreofficialresourcestobedevoted
to early warning and analysis’.2
This call coincided, actually, with two important developments in con-
flict studies (as well as in diplomatic practice and in the activities of
humanitarian NGOs), regarding early warning. First, there had been wide-
ranging efforts to establish or improve the capacity of existing institutions
and processes of early warning. See, for example, the work of the relevant
agencies in global and regional international organizations such as the
UN’s Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWS), Francophonie’s
l’Observatoire de la Délégation à la Paix, à la Démocratie et aux Droits de
l’Homme, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s High
Commissioner on National Minorities, and directly relevant to this analy-
sis, the Africa Union and its regional and sub-regional affiliates.3 Second,
there had been significant concern for the appropriate levels of analysis
(structure/institutional v. agency/behavioural) and the analytical method-
ologies (quantitative v. qualitative; open media sources v. field research)
upon which these systems would operate, or by which they would be
informed.4
1 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The
Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: IDRC, 2001), p.19.
2 Ibid., 21.
3 Klass Van Walraven, and Jurjen van der Vlugt. ‘Conflict Prevention and Early Warning in
the Political Practice of International Organizations’, Conflict Research Unit, Netherlands
Institute of International Relations (Clingendael), Occasional Paper, 1996; John Davies,
‘Conflict Early Warning and Early Response For Sub-Saharan Africa, Summary of Working
Draft’ Complex Emergency Response and Transition Initiative, Payson Center for
International Development and Technology Transfer, Tulane University, September 2000.;
Conflict Management Division, Peace and Security Department, Africa Union Commission,
‘Meeting the Challenge of Conflict Prevention in Africa: Towards the Operationalization of the
Continental Early Warning System’, Addis Ababa, 2008.; Hélène Lavoix, ‘Indicateurs et
MéthodologiesdePrévisiondesCrisesetConflits:Evaluation’, Paris: Agence française de dével-
oppement, 2005; Hélène Lavoix, ‘Construire un Système d’Alerte Précoce des Crises’, Note de
l’IFRI, Paris: Institut Français des Relations Internationals, 2006.
4 Lavoix, ‘Indicateurs et Méthodologies’ and ‘Construire un Système d’Alerte’; Hayward
R. Alker, Ted Robert Gurr, and Kumar Rupesinghe. Journeys Through Conflict: Narratives and
3. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 451
One must concede, however, certainly with respect to the African con-
text that is the focus of this paper, the limited impact of these efforts on the
levels of civil and interstate violent conflict. To explain the limited utility of
existing approaches to early warning, problems have been identified at
both empirical and conceptual levels. Organizational design, resource limi-
tations, and political will all constitute serious obstacles in the way of
resolving the warning-response problem.5 Further upstream from the prob-
lems of institutional performance, however, are equally important infor-
mation processing issues, which is where I focus my attention.
Even cursory analysis of the practice and theory of early warning reveals
a clear preference for tracking and analysing proximate or immediate causes
of conflict, sometimes referred to as ‘triggers’ or ‘accelerators’, over those
factors that might generate earlier warnings, such as shifts in deep-rooted,
structural determinants of conflict. This choice arises out of common
assumptions made about the nature of structural factors (viz. that they are
static and/or too indirectly linked to outcomes) and the relative ease with
which less deeply rooted factors may be monitored. Examples of structural
variables include ethnic polarization,6 political marginalization,7 pov-
erty and underdevelopment,8 primary commodity export dependence,9
enclave production,10 and system openness.11 The category of proximate or
immediate causes of conflict emphasises agency in such forms as political
Lessons. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001).; Suzanne Verstegen, ‘Conflict
Prevention and EarlyWarning in the Political Practice of International Organizations’, Conflict
Research Unit, Netherlands Institute of International Relations (Clingendael), Occasional
Paper, 1999.
5 Van Walraven and van der Vlugt, ‘Conflict Prevention’; David Carment and Karen
Garner, ‘Conflict Prevention and Early Warning: Problems, Pitfalls and Avenues for Success’,
Canadian Foreign Policy 6/2: 103-118 (1998); Alexander Austin, ‘Early Warning and the
Field: A Cargo Cult Science?’ in Berghof Handbook for Conflict Transformation, (Berlin:
Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, 2011). http://www.berghof
-handbook.net/documents/publications/austin_handbook.pdf, accessed 23 October 2011.
6 José G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol, ‘Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict,
and Civil Wars’, American Economic Review, 95/3:796-816 (2005).
7 Ted Robert Gurr, ‘Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing
World System’, International Studies Quarterly, 38/3: 347-377 (1994).
8 Fearon, James D. and David Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War’, American
Political Science Review. 97/1: 75-90 (2003).
9 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘On the Incidence of Civil War in Africa, Journal of
Conflict Resolution, 46/1: 13-28 (2002).
10 David Leonard and Scott Strauss, Africa's Stalled Development: International Causes
and Cures (Boulder: Lynne Rienner).
11 Ibrahim Elbadawi and Nicholas Sambanis, ‘How Much War Will We See? Explaining
the Prevalence of Civil War’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 46/3: 307-334 (2002).
4. 452 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
assassinations, regime crises, coups d’état, mass mobilization of social
forces, and government crackdowns). Data choices made by existing Early
Waring (EW) systems, the growing ease of (integrated, automated) event
data collection, and the nature of warnings actually issued by EW systems
appear to suggest a relationship between the observation costs associated
with tracking indicators of violent conflict and the timeliness of the warn-
ings their analysis generates.
In addition to the presumed ‘hidden’ quality of some ‘root causes’, the
detailed monitoring of which may require analysts to ‘get dust on their
boots’, there is also a tendency in the literature to assume these indicators
are not, in fact, variables, but rather ‘invariant structural characteristics.’12
Seen as constants of a background or contextual nature, they are held to
offer little in the way of predictive value, certainly not in the medium or
short term. They are, it is often assumed, indicators better suited for what
some see as the categorically distinct task of long-term risk assessment,
rather than for the dynamic business of early warning.13
My central contention is that it is wrong to dismiss structural data. I dem-
onstrate below how clearly connected structural factors are to the onset of
conflict. With respect to observation costs associated with collecting struc-
tural data, I suggest this obstacle can be surmounted by adopting a meth-
odology from conservation biology – the monitoring of what biologists
refer to as an ‘indicator species’, which for our purposes is an indicator spe-
cies of conflict.14 As with the frog that biologists monitor so closely looking
for signs of environmental disturbance, emergent, low-intensity conflicts
indicate the presence of social, economic, cultural and/or political factors
normally resistant to simple observation, but which are known to be associ-
ated with violent conflict. And just as there are many species that may func-
tion well for biologists as indicator species, many forms of low-intensity
conflict might function in this capacity because of the ways in which their
12 Davenport, Christian, David A. Armstrong II, and Mark I. Lichbach. ‘Conflict Escalation
and the Origins of Civil War.’ Working paper, University of Maryland, 2005. Accessed
25 October 2011.
13 Robert Ted Gurr, ‘Early-Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Assessment to Action’
in Kevin Hill (ed.), Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars Before They Start. (London, New
York: Routledge Press 2000); Craig J. Jenkins and Doug Bond, ‘Conflict Carrying Capacity,
Political Crisis, and Reconstruction: A Framework for the Early Warning of Political System
Vulnerability’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 45/1: 3-31 (2001); David Carment and Karen
Garner, ‘Conflict Prevention and Early Warning: Problems, Pitfalls and Avenues for Success’,
Canadian Foreign Policy 7: 103-118 (1999).
14 T.M. Caro, and Gillian O’Hoherty, ‘On the Use of Surrogate Species in Conservation
Biology’, Conservation Biology 13/4: 805-814 (1999).
5. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 453
properties reflect on larger, more broadly relevant socio-cultural and/or
politico-economic conditions. Examples of conflict with this indicative
value include conflicts in institutions of higher education,15 conflict behav-
iour among society’s youth, particularly in the urban milieu,16 and market-
arena conflicts, particularly transboundary markets that have proved to be
particularly relevant in the sensitive Mano River Basin.17 Each of these
types of conflict emerges out of relationships that are embedded in envi-
ronments subject to transformation induced by constant streams of endog-
enous and exogenous shocks. Their sensitivity to these changes is what
makes them good indicators of the general level of societal tension, a factor
that has been linked to the outbreak of violent conflict with some cer-
tainty.18 It is precisely this generalised societal tension that EW must incor-
porate if it is to inform better prevention.19
Though I suggest these ideas have widespread applicability, the focus of
this paper is on Africa and the species of conflict – the functional equiva-
lent of the biologists’ frog – I suggest we monitor has been of particular
interest to observers of rural development and social change in Africa:
herder-farmer conflict. The relationship between pastoralists and sedentary
agriculturalists is a complex one. It is very often described as, at least
potentially, symbiotic. But it has also been seen as the basis for conflict
of the highest intensity, including (in a mutated ‘racialised’ form) as a
15 Abdou Sylla, ‘De la Grève à la Réforme : Luttes Enseignantes et Crises Sociales au
Sénégal’, Politique Africaine, 8: 61-73 (1982); Babacar Buuba Diop, ‘Les Indicateurs de Conflits
Violents dans les Universités – L’exemple de l’Université de Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD)’,
Paper presented at the Workshop Conflits Violents en Afrique: À la Recherche d’Outils d’Alerte
etdePrévention.AtelierII:GoréeInstitute,GoréeIsland,Senegal,12-13,January2006;William
Warters, ‘Researching Campus Conflict Management Culture(s): A Role for Ombuds?’,
Conflict Management in Higher Education Report, 3/1: October 2002.
16 Lourençoda Silva, ‘La Jeunesse dans la Prevention des Conflits et la Lutte Contre la
Violence: Exemple de Guinée-Bissau’, Paper presented at the Workshop Conflits Violents en
Afrique: À la Recherché d’Outils d’Alerte et de Prévention. Atelier II: Gorée Institute, Gorée
Island, Senegal, 12- 13, January 2006; United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Bureau
for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, ‘Youth and Violent Conflict: Society and Development in
Crisis?’ New York: UNDP.
17 Thanks to OdileTendengWeidler for the insights that the key role women play in these
markets and in reconstituting the social fabric of post-conflict societies makes the analysis
of these relationships of particular relevance to early warning (personal conversations,
February 2007).
18 Rachel Murray, ‘Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Need for a Wider Perspective’,
Journal of African Law 45/1: 13-24 (2001); Joanne Thorburn, and Rob Zaagman (eds.), The Role
of theHighCommissioneronNationalMinoritiesinOSCEConflictPrevention.AnIntroduction.
The Hague: Foundation for Inter-Ethnic Relations (1997).
19 Davies, ‘Conflict Early Warning’; Lavoix, ‘Indicateurs et Méthodologies’.
6. 454 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
precondition for genocide.20 Between these extremes lies the complete
range of possible relations. Studies of agro-pastoral relations ‘reveal that
violent conflicts occur, abate, and recur and that the causes usually include
the scarcity of natural resources as well as deeper structural factors in the
relationship between herders and farmers.’21 In this article I demonstrate
the myriad ways in which herder-farmer relations’ seemingly inexorable
cycles of conflict occurrence, abatement, and recurrence are actually
responses to changing structural conditions in a political economy. It is this
reactivity that makes herder-farmer conflict akin to the frog – a ‘most sensi-
tive species’ indicator.
The Analogy
In the field of conservation biology, researchers have long employed the
notion of the ‘surrogate species’ as a shortcut monitoring device to measure
a wide range of relevant environmental outcomes such as the ‘magnitude
of anthropogenic disturbance’, trends in populations of other species, and
levels of biodiversity.22 An indicator species is defined as ‘an organism
whose characteristics (e.g., presence or absence, population density,
dispersion, reproductive success) are used as an index of attributes too dif-
ficult, inconvenient, or expensive to measure for other species or environ-
mental conditions of interest.’23 Successful indicator species ‘must be
sensitive to human disturbance in order to provide early warning of anthro-
pogenically induced environmental change’.24 The fate of a species
designated an indicator is deemed a signal or harbinger of the fate of the
larger environment and thus of its other, higher order or more complex
inhabitants.
Not all species, however, are equally effective indicators. In the search for
evidence of environmental disturbance, a good ‘indicator is an organism so
ultimately associated with particular environmental conditions that its
20 Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the
Genocide in Rwanda. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
21 Karim Hussein, James Sumberg and David Seddon, ‘Increasing Violent Conflict
between Herders and Farmers in Africa: Claims and Evidence’, Development Policy Review
17/4: 397-418 (1999).
22 T.M. Caro, and Gillian O’Hoherty, ‘On the Use of Surrogate Species’.
23 P.B. Landres, J. Verner, and J.W. Thomas, ‘Ecological Uses of Vertebrate Indicator
Species: A Critique’, Conservation Biology 2:316-327 (1988) cited in T.M. Caro, and Gillian
O’Hoherty, ‘On the Use of Surrogate Species’, p. 806.
24 Ibid.
7. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 455
presence indicates the existence of those conditions.’25 In particular, a
‘most sensitive species’ is one whose integration into, and sensitivity to
changes in, a habitat could mark minimum thresholds of danger for higher
order organisms.26
All this suggests that an indicator species is more than a mere proxy.
Proxies, in both environmental and social sciences, are directly measured
variables that indirectly reveal the value of other variables, those whose
measurements would incur higher observation costs. An indicator species
is not a mere variable. It is a systemic construct, a complex organism that
we can assess in terms of a host of component variables, such as number
and size. Doing so signals trends in other systemic properties or changes in
the health of the environment (physical or socio-political) in which the
species is embedded. The fundamental principle is that ‘as goes the indica-
tor species, so go others.’
In conflict studies this means that one can make inferences about the
likelihood of impending violent conflict based on observations of an actual
variety of conflict, and not just of a host of structural variables sometimes
associated with their outbreak, but whose causal impact is always medi-
ated by situationally unique factors. These are, then, smaller inferential
leaps. One is tracking one form of conflict to infer the state of conditions
that give rise to the herder-farmer conflict itself, as well as to other related
or epiphenomenal – and potentially more alarming – conflicts.The insights
of those who have connected the allegedly low-stakes conflict among herd-
ers and farmers to much more serious levels of violent conflict, should
inform a broader exploration into their relevance for conflict early
warning.27 Doing so may bring to the attention of those responsible for con-
flict prevention important changes in the underlying conditions responsi-
ble for creating the contexts in which triggers of violent conflict are both
more probable and more likely to have their escalatory effects, and do so
long before they lead to a level of conflict which attracts international
attention.
25 D. R. Pattan, ‘Is the Use of ‘Management Indicator Species’ Feasible?’ Western Journal
of Applied Forestry 2:33-34 (1987) cited in T.M. Caro, and Gillian O’Hoherty, ‘On the Use of
Surrogate Species’, p. 807.
26 John Cairns, Jr., ‘The Myth of the Most Sensitive Species’, BioScience 36/10:670-672
(1986).
27 Alassane Diawara, ‘Darfour: Aux Sources du Mal’, Zenith (Dakar) 0:35-36 (2005);
Stephan Faris, ‘The Real Roots of Darfur’, The Atlantic Monthly. Pp. 67-69 (April, 2007).
8. 456 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
II. Phases and Causes of Conflict
It is clear that key methodological challenges for an effective EWsystem are
at once theoretical and empirical and both have implications for the qual-
ity and type of indicators used. The core responsibility of an EW system is
to provide timely and reliable information to those charged with managing
conflict. Timely information is that which maximises the window of oppor-
tunity for ‘first responders’ or conflict governing agents. Reliable informa-
tion is that which warns of violent conflict with a high degree of accuracy.
The conundrum for effective EW is that tracking indicators that maximise
reliability may come at the expense of timeliness, and vice versa. The most
reliable indicators, again, those with highest correlative or predictive value,
may simply not be ‘economically observable.’
In sum, there are myriad information problems associated with early
warning. Early warning systems require reliable data, which are available in
a meaningfully early fashion and that do not require a prohibitive level of
organizational resources to obtain and analyse it. In other words, models of
EW must minimise information costs associated with data collection and
analysis, but also maximise the system’s predictive power.
What, then, is an early warning? With respect to the timeliness of data,
EW systems find their benchmarks in conflict phasing models typified by
the work of the Beyond Intractability group, which includes the phases
captured in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Standard model of conflict phases28
Conflict Escalation
Intensity
(Hurting) Stalemate
De-escalation / Negotiation
Dispute Settlement
Post-Conflict
Peacebuilding
Conflict Emergence
Time
Latent
Conflict
28 Eric Brahm, ‘Conflict Stages’, Beyond Intractability. Ed Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess.
September 2003, Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder,
9. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 457
The relationship between conflict intensity and temporal sequence cap-
tured in Figure 1 also relates to the level of causal analysis problem, albeit in
a discomfited way. The standard temporal sequencing of conflict, such as
the one above, or the six phase model of the Conflict EarlyWarning Systems
(CEWS) research project of the International Social Science Council
(Dispute, Crisis, Limited Violence, Massive Violence, Abatement, and
Settlement) also denotes a conceptual framework for causal analysis. That
is, there seems to be a presumed correlation between an event’s location on
the temporal or phasing sequence of the conflict model, and the level of
causation with which it articulates. This can better be seen in a modified
version of Lavoix’s representation.29
Figure 2 reveals the widely held assumption that structural causes must
temporally precede proximate and immediate causes, and that each is
associated with a given level of tension. This is problematic, however, given
the interactive and dynamic nature of these factors. It is also ironic, given
the common dismissal of structural factors as being of little relevance to
EW, despite the obvious fact that their place in the temporal sequence
could offer the earliest of warnings.
This can be explained by the way in which structure tends to be viewed
in both the scholarly literature and in the practice of conflict prevention.
Colorado, USA. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/conflict_stages, accessed 28
October 2011.
29 Lavoix is critical of the standard model of conflict stages.
30 Lavoix, ‘Indicateurs et méthodologies’.
Figure 2. Levels of Causal Indication30
Structuralcauses
Severe crisis or war
threshold
Structuralcauses
Immediate causes:
triggers, catalysts,
accelerators
Proximatecauses
Time
Level of tension or
escalation
Stabilizingfactors
10. 458 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
Typically, structural factors are seen as historically remote, static properties
with but indirect causal connections to the outbreak of violent conflict.31
Hence, the received view is that root causes can at most be ‘used to assess
the risk potential of a country (background)’, that they are at best ‘neces-
sary but not sufficient causes of armed conflict’, that they are ‘mostly
static – change little over time’ and are only remotely connected to the out-
break of conflict because they are merely ‘embedded in historical/cultural
context.’32 The limited function of structural factors in EW reflects the view
that the more useful proximate causes of conflict are the more relevant
‘events which draw their strengths from root causes.’33 Thus structural
causes continue to play a minimal role in EW theory and practice, both of
which favour factors more closely (temporally) connected to the outbreak
of violent conflict because of the widely held assumption that ‘[w]hile it is
true that root conditions prepare the ground for proximate causes there
tends not to be a clear link between the two’ (Ibid.).
These levels of causality, however, must be seen as interactive and each
as dynamic. As Lavoix convincingly argues, analysts and practitioners of
EW tend to be trapped in a strictly linear model of conflict, contrary to the
proposition I advance here: temporally more immediate causes of conflict
can have an impact on more remote proximate variables, which in turn
might have implications for even more distant structural conditions. But
clearly this is the case. If as Gurr notes, ‘the severity of political and eco-
nomic inequalities… are maintained by discrimination and repression’ then
a direct link between structural factors (social inequalities) and proximate
causes (state action, government policy) is established.34 The causal direc-
tion implied there, however, is not captured in the received view (as seen in
both Figure 1 and Figure 2). What Gurr finds is that well established proxi-
mate causes are (re)creating the so-called background conditions, from
which the former are presumed to but ‘draw their strengths.’
31 Note the slope of the escalation/time function at the level of structural causes in
Figure 2.
32 Jakkie Cilliers, ‘Conflict Early Warning Systems and Support of the Comprehensive
Peace Agreement in Sudan’, Paper presented at the Conference on Early Warning Systems
‘Conflicts are Preventable, Peace is Sustainable’, Khartoum, 10-13 April 2006, p.3.
33 West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP), ‘Guinea and the Challenge of
Political Uncertainty and Looming Socio-Economic Implosion’, WARN Policy Brief, Mano
River Basin. Accra: WANEP Secretariat July 31, 2006.
34 Robert Ted Gurr, ‘Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing
World System’, International Studies Quarterly 38/3: 347-377 (1994).
11. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 459
Theory and practice, then, favour indicators not necessarily disposed to
generate warnings that merit the label ‘early.’ Take for example, data avail-
able from events surrounding a conflict in Guinea in 2007. In January,
Guinea entered into an official ‘state of siege.’TheWest African sub-region’s
EW system issued its first warning report on Guinea in July, 2006, in which
it spoke of a looming ‘socio-economic implosion.’35 This would seem to sat-
isfy PIOOM’s criteria for an ‘early’ warning, which is an advance notice of
6–12 months.36 The July report, however, was issued nearly a month and a
half after ‘the shooting to death of 21 Guinean students during the June 12
and 13, 2006 demonstration….’37 The report goes on to declare, in fact, that
the shootings by government forces ‘constitute a major trigger….’38The first
report on Guinea, whose crisis threatened the integrity of the state, called
attention to ‘immediate’ causes (triggers) at a point in which the country
was clearly in an escalatory phase. By any standard, such a report, a product
of what is considered a fairly sophisticated EW system, bested on the conti-
nent only by the internationally funded CEWARN, cannot be deemed early.
By PIOOM standards, it cannot even be counted as a late warning
(between 0-6 weeks). This is but a descriptive account of a conflict already
in progress.
The emphasis EW systems place on events such as those highlighted in
WANEP’s report on Guinea, is understandable. They are closely correlated
with violent conflict and they present relatively low observations costs.
This bias is unfortunate, however, as the history of any of Africa’s conflicts
will demonstrate. By the time events of the engagement phases of disputes
are registered in open media sources, it is in many instances too late to pre-
vent movement along the conflict curve into the crisis and stalemate
phases. And given the stakes in Africa of so many of these conflicts, time is
of the essence. Not only do African states account for a disproportionate
share of states in the ‘Alert’ category of the Failed States Index, but analysis
of its data reveals that states in Africa move toward failure at 1.5 times the
rate of non-African states. Why that would be is, of course, a question
beyond the scope of this paper.39 It clearly suggests, however, the particular
relevance EW holds for Africa.
35 WANEP, ‘Guinea and the Challenge of Political Uncertainty’, p.1.
36 PIOOM is the Dutch acronym for Interdisciplinary Research Program on Root Causes
of Human Rights Violations at Leiden University.
37 WANEP, ‘Guinea and the Challenge of Political Uncertainty’, p.1.
38 Ibid., Emphasis added.
39 See Brett R. O’Bannon, ‘IsThere a State in Africa? Implications for a Human Protection
Norm’,inBrettR.O’BannonandJohnRoth(eds.)ImperfectDuties?HumanitarianIntervention
12. 460 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
The information problems (viz., cost, timeliness, reliability) confronting
EW systems are captured in the following matrix. The use of an indicator
species of conflict, one I argue would satisfy the criteria of a most sensitive
species, aims to help resolve this theoretical and empirical conundrum.
III. Structural Causes of Conflict
Whether at the root, proximate or immediate level EWindicators should be
strongly correlated with known causes of conflict. I follow a standard causal
typology of structural factors, which consists of political, economic, envi-
ronmental and socio-cultural variables.
Structural explanations of a political orientation emphasise inter alia fac-
tors related to the capacity of the state or regime to manage conflicts.
WilliamZartman,FrancisDengandcolleagues,forexample,haveadvanced
numerous claims about the relevance of governance and regime structures
to the everyday business of politics that is conflict management.40 Debates
on the relevance of regime type for conflict articulate with the democratic
peace literature. Anticipating democratic peace hypotheses, for example,
Gurr and Lichbach predicted that democracies would prove less prone to
violentcivilunrest.41Morerecentwork,however,confirmswhatHuntington
in Africa and the Responsibility to Protect in the Post-Iraq Era, (New York, London: Routledge
Press, forthcoming).
40 Francis M. Deng, Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald Rothchild, and I. William
Zartman, Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa. (Washington D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press, (1996); William I. Zartman (ed.) Governance as Conflict
Management: Politics and Violence in West Africa, (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution
Press, 1997).
41 Robert Ted Gurr, and Mark Lichbach, ‘Forecasting Domestic Political Conflict’, In:
J. David Singer and Michael D. Wallace (eds.), To Augur Well: Early Warning Indicators in
World Politics, pp. 153–94. (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979).
Latent Emergent Escalation Crisis/Stalemate
Root/Structural/Systemic X High
Proximate/Intermediate X X Medium
Immediate/Triggers X X Low
Early Moderate Late Late
Timeliness of Indicator
CausalLevel
Observation
Costs
Conflict phase
Figure 3. Early Warning Indicators: Levels, Phases and Observation costs.
13. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 461
argued, that the relationship between democratic governance (or system
openness as it is sometimes referred to) and domestic stability is best rep-
resented as a binomial function with states and regimes in transition most
susceptible to violent conflict.42
The literature dealing with failed states makes a most forceful claim for
the importance of institutional factors in the warning of conflict. Sawyer,
for example, places the Mano River Basin nightmare squarely within the
political/institutional framework arguing ‘sustained marginalization and
state-supported injustice have created conditions for the crisis and col-
lapse.’43 Thus, while Sawyer recognises the importance of the ‘entrepre-
neurial talents’ – that is the agency – of a Charles Taylor for the outbreak
of conflict, he equally emphasises an environmental condition of the sort
that Olowu and Wunsch have argued results from the structural conditions
of the overly centralised state in Africa.44 That resultant ‘background’
condition constituted the essential factor for the effective escalation of a
grievance-inspired, but structurally sustained, conflict in West Africa.
Economic Factors
Economic models of conflict emphasise factors associated with modern-
ization and the level of development (human and economic), such as the
relevance of extreme poverty45 and inequalities in the distribution of
scarce economic resources.46 Indeed, economic structure invoked as causal
explanation has again obtained a prominent position in the field of conflict
analysis. Leading the endeavour are the widely cited works of Collier
and Hoeffler, which have demonstrated the importance of economic
opportunities that enable actors to pursue their conflict goals.47 They also
42 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1968); Errol Henderson, Democracy and War: The End of an Illusion? (Boulder: Lynne
Rienner Press, 2002).
43 Amos Sawyer, ‘Violent Conflicts and Governance Challenges in West Africa: The Case
of the Mano River Basin Area’, Journal of Modern African Studies 42/3:437-63 (2004).
44 Dele Olowu, and James S. Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa: The Challenges of
Democratic Decentralization. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004).
45 James D. Fearon and David Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War’, American
Political Science Review, 97/1: 75-90 (2003).
46 Frances Stewart, ‘Horizontal Inequalities as a Source of Conflict, in F. Hampson and
D. Malone (eds.) From Reaction to Prevention Opportunities for the UN System, (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp, 105-136.
47 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War’, Policy Research
Working Paper 2355, World Bank, Washington, D.C. 2001; Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, ‘On
14. 462 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
demonstrated a simple but important relationship between the degree to
which a state is dependent on primary export commodities and the coun-
try’s conflict risk potential.48 Following in this vein, Leonard and Scott
argue that the presence of important enclave production sites, and the gov-
ernment’s dependence on them, are principal components of the conflict
puzzle.49 They demonstrate how valuable resources concentrated in ways
that make them subject to predation have played a critical role in sustain-
ing violent conflict in a number of cases in Africa.
Environmental Factors
Environmental factors, given their presumed ‘background’ nature, are
nearly synonymous with structural explanations and have been widely
examined for their relationship to conflict. Klare puts the relationship in a
global context building on the work of others who have highlighted the
growing potential for violent conflict over resources such as increasingly
scarce oil and water.50 Though widely criticised, Kaplan’s anarchical sce-
narios are also widely cited and have important environmental and
Malthusian thrusts.51 Offering a more nuanced perspective regarding the
environment-conflict relationship, however, is Homer-Dixon. Avoiding the
seduction of univariate explanations, which structural arguments are often
subject to, his models of resource-driven conflicts are nevertheless power-
fully elegant explanatory frameworks. They have also been used to capture
the dynamics of herder-farmer conflict.52
the Incidence of Civil War in Africa’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 46/1: 13-28 (2002). See also
Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Nicholas Sambanis, ‘The Collier-Hoeffler Model of Civil War
Onset and the Case Study Project Research Design’, In Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis
(eds.), Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis, Volume 1: Africa. (Washington, DC:
World Bank 2005).
48 Collier and Hoeffler, ‘Greed and Grievance’.
49 David Leonard and Scott Strauss, Africa's Stalled Development: International Causes
and Cures, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003).
50 Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, (New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2001).
51 Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War,
(New York: Vintage Press, 2001.
52 Thomas Homer-Dixon, ‘Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from
Cases’, International Security, 19/1: 5-40 (1994).
15. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 463
Socio-cultural Factors
Finally, the socio-cultural category of structural explanations for conflict
remains influential. Having long been rejected for its poverty, primordial
explanations for (ethnic) conflicts have given way to a broader range of
socio-cultural explanations. Barth’s assessment of the ways in which cul-
tural identities inform both groups and the boundaries between them, is
particularly relevant to socio-cultural explanations for conflict. His classic
work demonstrated how all sorts of defining ethnic characteristics could
change while the identifications among recognizably distinct groups were
maintained. ‘[M]ost of the cultural matter that at any time is associated
withahumanpopulationisnotconstrainedby[ethnicgroup]boundar[ies];
it can vary, be learnt, and change without any critical relation to the bound-
ary maintenance of the ethnic group.’53 It is this variability in the under-
standing of, or meaning attached to and among, groups constituting society
that is important. The structural notion of ethnic polarization, for example,
is particularly relevant here. As an explanation for conflict, the degree to
which a society is ethnically polarised is in no way equivalent to or synony-
mous with the degree to which there are multiple cultural groups in society.
The determining factor is the degree to which these groups suffer from
alienation and the degree of antagonism toward other groups in society (or
across an arbitrary national boundary) such alienation tends to produce.54
These cultural structures, then, constitute important variables of a non-
static nature not normally ascribed to them. They must be, then, incorpo-
rated into models of early warning.
The Sensitivity of Herder-Farmer Relations to Structural Change
Herder-farmer relations have been shown to register the structural impacts
of political change associated with state-building and other changes in
state/regime capacity. Altering the structures of power and authority con-
strains and/or enables the efforts of social actors to harmonise, or at least
institutionalise, what can be conflicting modes of production or subsis-
tence. In the colonial period, herders and farmers registered the effects
53 Fredrik Barth, ‘Introduction, in Fredrik Barth (ed.) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries,
(Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1998) p. 38.
54 José G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol, ‘Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict,
and Civil Wars’, American Economic Review 95/3: 796-816 (2005).
16. 464 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
of state building in numerous ways. Boundary formation/alteration, such
as arbitrarily dividing communities across international boundaries and/
or grouping them within them, created new conditions for the competi-
tion over scarce resources. Oba found, for example, that as the British
established the structures of indirect rule in Kenya, with its attendant insti-
tutions for land management and the fixing of tribal boundaries, herder-
farmer conflict escalated, morphed into more cattle raiding and a general
increase in inter-pastoralist conflict was cited.55
State building creates both an arena where societal relationships get
negotiated and a key autonomous agent. This meant in Kenya, again, that
‘[p]olitical, institutional and economic power shifted to farmers as they
became integrated into the state in terms of their production system, and
with increased access to infrastructure and markets.’ The increase in inter-
pastoralist conflict may well have been simple resource scarcity resulting
from the fact that, ‘[h]erders could no longer control access to water and
grazing by force and thus the vital dry season and drought season grazing
refuges were reduced’ (Campbell et al 2004,8).56
As Fukuyama has argued, state building poses certain dangers. Increasing
the scope of state functions without adequate state capacity can lead to
failure.57 During Thomas Sankara’s efforts to modernise governance struc-
tures in Burkina Faso, for example, state institutions suppressed the tradi-
tional institution of the village chieftaincy, prohibiting chiefs from
exercising many of their historic prerogatives.The management of conflicts
among Mossi farmers and Fulbe pastoralists was one such prerogative.58
Due at least in part to this effort, many scholars have described worsening
trends in Mossi-Fulbe relations.59 Similarly, in Ethiopia, Gedi found that
though disputes among herders and farmers over water and land resources
55 G. Oba, ‘Ecological Factors in Land Use Conflicts, Land Administration and Food
Insecurity in Turkana, Kenya’, Pastoral Development Network Paper No 33a, 1992, cited in
Karim Hussein, James Sumberg and David Seddon, ‘Increasing Violent Conflict between
Herders and Farmers in Africa: Claims and Evidence’, Development Policy Review. 17: 397-418
(1999), p. 404.
56 David J. Campbell, Salome B. Misana and Jennifer M. Olson, ‘Comparing the Kenyan
and Tanzanian Slopes of Mt. Kilamanjaro: Why are the Adjacent Land Uses so Different?’ Land
Use Change Impacts and Dynamics (LUCID) Project Working Paper No. 44. Nairobi, Kenya:
International Livestock Research Institute.
57 Francis Fukuyam, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century,
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
58 Mark Breusers, Susanne Nederlof and Teunis Van Rheenen, ‘Conflict or Symbiosis?
Disentangling farmer-herdsman relations: the Mossi and Fulbe of the Central Plateau,
Burkina Faso’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 36/3: 357-380 (1998).
59 Breusers et al cite six studies making such a claim.
17. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 465
have traditionally been managed by elders (guurti) ‘the ability of this
traditional resource conflict settling and managing institution has been
severely eroded because of increasing interventions by the local govern-
ment authorities and security forces.’60 When local authorities lack the
capacity to carry out their mandates, conflicts go unmanaged. Herder-
farmer conflict signals the apparent capacity of these local institutions of
governance.
Of course, not all traditional institutions of governance are effective.
Bernardet’s analysis in Côte d’Ivoire revealed that institutions in the most
traditional zone – the north where common pool resource management is
usually vested in the villages’ oldest herders – were particularly ‘sclerotic’
and subject to failure.61 The bottom line: where traditional ‘conflict medi-
cine’ fails,62 modern state institutions prove ineffectual and demand does
not create a supply of effective syncretic institutions,63 societal conflicts
can escalate. This invariably shows up in the relations between herders and
farmers who describe themselves as living in a governance vacuum, with
no clear sense of where effective authority lies.64
Anticipating Posner,65 who emphasises the institutional context in the
varied degree to which elites are able to instrumentalise ethnicity, Waldie’s
analysis in Northern Sierra Leone revealed that the 1984 violent herder-
farmer clashes that escalated into the ‘Fula-Yalunka War’, occurred only in
electoral districts where Fula herders and Yalunka farmers were ‘fairly
evenly divided.’66 This gave both groups incentives to organise on ethnic
60 Ahmed Ali Gedi, ‘Herder-Farmer Conflicts in the Dawa-Ganale Basin Area: The Case of
Intra-Clan Conflict Among the Degodia Somali of Dollo Ado District in the Somali Regional
Stateof Ethiopia’, Governance and ConflictTransformationWorking Paper No. 1. Bern: NCRR
North –South, (2005), p. 51.
61 Phillipe Bernardet, ‘Éleveurs et Agriculteurs en Côte d’Ivoire: Spécialisation et
Complémentarité’, in Chantal Blanc-Pamard and Jean Boutrais (eds.) Á la Croisée des
Parcours: Pasteurs, éleveurs, cultivateurs. (Paris: ORSTOM Éditions, 1994).
62 William I. Zartman (ed.), Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts, African Conflict
'Medicine'. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 2000).
63 Dennis Galvan, The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally
Sustainable Development in Senegal. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
64 Brett R. O’Bannon, ‘Receiving an “Empty Envelope”: Governance Reforms and the
Management of Herder-Farmer Conflict’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 40/1: 76-100
(2006).
65 Daniel. N. Posner, Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
66 Kevin Waldie, ‘Cattle and Concrete: Some Aspects of Social Organisation Among the
Fula in and around Kabala, Northern Sierra Leone.’ Center for Social Anthropology and
Computing Monographs. Volume 16. Canterbury: University of Kent, (2001).
18. 466 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
lines. Only in such a context were candidates for parliament effective in
their efforts to tap into latent conflicts and spark a discourse of autoch-
thony. In this institutional environment local herder-farmer relations artic-
ulated with – and presaged – national discourse in a most destructive way.
Similar dynamics in which interdependent herders and farmers are trans-
formed into autochthones and allochtones have been observed in Northern
Côte d’Ivoire,67 Burkina Faso68 and Ethiopia.69
Structural economic change has been directly related to the health of
the social fabric, which in turn has indirect effects on the outbreak of
violence. Monitoring the relations between herding and farming commu-
nities attests to this dynamic. Modernization in modes of production has
proved particularly important. These transformations impact inter-group
interactions by transforming what Landais and Lhoste sees as essentially
primordial ‘relations of economic complementarity’ into ‘relations of com-
petition … relative to the principle factors of agricultural production’.70
A shift from hoe farming to draught animal cultivation, for example, often
spurs the growth of agropastoralism, a condition in which farmers may
begin to invest greater wealth in herds, which they then guard by them-
selves near their own farms. This threatens the entrustment contracts
central to the interdependence of these communities. As more farmers
begin using animals for agricultural purposes the manure contract, another
manifestation of symbiosis, is undermined. This leaves herding communi-
ties in a desperate struggle to find late season pasturage. Such a struggle
often leads directly to conflict where herders adopt aggressive coping strat-
egies such as ‘night grazing’, or even blatant daytime encroachment of
cropland. These incidents, and the enormous damage animals may cause
have been widely documented as the most common complaint by farmers,
and for good reason. Bassett71 estimated that the average value to a farmer
67 Phillipe Bernardet, ‘Élevage et Agriculture dans les Savanes du Nord: Les Mécanismes
Sociaux d’un Conflit’, Politique Africaine, 24:29-40 (1986); Thomas J. Bassett, ‘The Political
Ecology of Peasant-Herder Conflicts in the Northern Ivory Coast’, Annals of the Association
of American Geographers, 78/3: 453-472 (1988).
68 Matthias Banzhaf, Boureima Drabo and Hermann Grell. ‘From Conflict to Consensus:
Towards Joint Management of Natural Resources by Pastoralists and Agro-pastoralists in the
Zone of Kishi Beiga, Burkina Faso’. Securing the Commons No. 3 London: International
Institute for Environment and Development (2000).
69 Gedi, ‘Herder-Farmer Conflicts in the Dawa-Ganale’.
70 Étienne Landais and Phillipe Lhoste, ‘L’Association Agriculture-élevage en Afrique
Intertropicale: Un Mythe Techniciste Confronté aux Réalités du Terrain’, Cahiers Science
Humaine 26/1-2: 217-235 (1990).
71 Bassett, ‘The Political Ecology of Peasant-Herder Conflicts’.
19. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 467
of an uncompensated incident of crop damage was approximately 1/5 of a
farmer’s yearly income ($130/$680).
The development of irrigated farming has transformative impacts soci-
ety-wide, but they appear especially discernable in herder-farmer relations.
Given the limited capacity of traditional extensive agriculture, ‘increasing
the farm area is the most common solution to increase production’,72 and
modern irrigation systems make pursuing such a strategy ever more feasi-
ble. In combination with the shift to draught animal cultivation, rural
households are increasingly exploiting the possibilities of dry season agri-
culture. These developments often create new or greater difficulties for
transhumant communities. New and larger farm holdings often encroach
on traditional pastoral lands. And even where they do not, access to equally
essential water resources may be blocked by these agricultural tenden-
cies.73 Irrigation is significant, then, because ‘[t]he most important mecha-
nism to avoid excessive environmental pressure in both modes of existence,
i.e. farming and herding, has traditionally been the mobility of both fields
and animals….’74 Modern irrigation systems may expand farm holdings but
their sunk costs also ‘sedentarise’ agriculture and impede the migration
strategies of pastoralists.
These tensions call into sharp relief the governance-as-conflict manage-
ment capacity of the state.75 Only in the context of effective land manage-
ment systems can these social pressures be maintained. The effectiveness,
therefore, of rural development efforts is especially well indicated by the
frequency and intensity of herder-farmer conflict over jointly exploited
resources. De Haan found the gestion de terroir76 approach ineffective in
Benin77 while Marty’s analysis of land management in Northern Cameroon
72 Maria Brockhaus, Tanja Pickardt and Barbara Rischowsky, ‘Mediation in a Changing
Landscape: Success and Failure in Managing Conflicts over Natural Resources in Southwest
Burkina Faso’, Issue Paper no. 125, International Institute for Environment and Development
(2003), p. 7.
73 Leo de Haan, ‘Gestion de Terroir at the Frontier: Village Land Management including
Both Peasants and Pastoralists in Benin’ in: H.J. Bruins and H. Lithwick (eds.), The Arid
Frontier. Interactive Management of Environment And Development, (Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers 1998).
74 Ibid.
75 Zartman, Governance as Conflict Management.
76 The gestion de terroirs is described by the Food and Agricultural Organization as a
‘people-centered’ approach to rural development, one that aims to harmonize relations
between the local state and traditional authorities (Cleary 2003). It is especially common in
francophone Africa.
77 de Haan, ‘Gestion de Terroir’.
20. 468 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
and Southern Niger informs a more sanguine view.78 Both accounts relate
the social impact of economic development to the level of herder-farmer
conflict.
A final economic factor speaks to conflict and market conditions. The
sale of small arms has been linked to violent conflict throughout Africa,
including directly to the outbreak of herder-famer violence.79 Ame noted
that ‘the East African weekly newspaper estimates that there are between
150,000 and 200,000 firearms in the Karamoja region of Uganda alone’ and
argues that in both pastoral and agro-pastoral areas ‘[i]nter-group interac-
tions are determined by the ready availability of small arms that lead to the
escalation of conflict…’. 80 Though Hussein et al found the evidence insuf-
ficient, years before the genocide in Darfur, ‘Hutchison (1991:106) described
conflicts between Arab pastoralists and Fur cultivators in Sudan as ‘increas-
ing in intensity’ due to the availability of modern weapons…’.81
Herder-farmer relations have been shown to be particularly sensitive to
environmental change, which may constitute an especially significant shock
to local systems. Homer-Dixon finds that when ‘a fall in the quality and
quantity of a renewable resource interacts with population growth [it] can
produce dire environmental scarcity for poorer and weaker groups in soci-
ety.’82 Environmental scarcity does not, by itself, cause violent conflict, but
in combination with societal and political variables it has been associated
with ethnic conflicts, coups d’etat and other forms of communal violence.
To wit, when dynamics of resource scarcity began to appear in the late
1980s in the Senegal RiverValley, tensions among herding and farming com-
munities occupying both river banks steadily mounted. Recurrent drought
beginning in the 1970s had led to a massive river irrigation scheme which
78 André Marty, ‘La Gestion des Terroirs et Les Éleveurs: Un Outil d’Exclusion ou de
Négociation?’ Revue Tiers Monde 34/134: 327-344 (1993).
79 M. Stahl, ‘Issues for Social Science Research Focusing on Dryland Dynamics in Africa’,
in Hjort af Ornas (ed.) Security in African Drylands: Research, Development and Policy.
Research Program on Environment and International Security. Departments of Human and
Physical Geography, Uppsala University, cited in Hussein, ‘Increasing Violent Conflict’.
80 Abdurahman Ame, ‘Cross-border livestock Trade and Small Arms and Conflict in
Pastoral Areas of the Horn of Africa: Case Study from Southern Ethiopia and Northern
Kenya’, paper presented at the Global Conference of The International Association for the
Study of Common Property, Bali, Indonesia, June 19-23, 2006.
81 R. A. Hutchison, (ed.) Fighting for Survival: Insecurity, People, and the Environment in
the Horn of Africa, (Geneva: IUCN, 1991), cited in Hussein et al., ‘Increasing Violent Conflict’,
p. 408.
82 Thomas Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001), p. 73.
21. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 469
significantly affected land tenure in the area.83 Following a series of inci-
dents in the upper valley in which herders from Mauritania encroached on
Senegalese farms located on river islands, an incident in April 1989 sparked
a spiral of ethnic violence that ended with troops amassed on both sides of
the border and with diplomatic relations ruptured for years.84
Given the worrisome trends of desertification and the growing recogni-
tion that developing countries will face comparatively tougher challenges
coping with climate change, peaceful co-existence of farmers and herders
is threatened by long-term environmental challenges. Van Dijk argues that
initial West African responses to droughts of the 1970s and 1980s were fairly
benign.85 The increased migration of herding communities toward more
humid zones was met with a certain level of appreciation by farming com-
munities as this facilitated greater economic exchange. We have already
seen how, in Côte d’Ivoire for example, state policy actually encouraged
these transhumant trends. Nevertheless, he also notes that eventual trends
in resource scarcity, namely continued growth in the area’s animal biomass
as well as in the human population, brought about heightened competition
for space and scarce natural resources, which was accompanied by a higher
frequency of crop damage and a general degradation of natural resources.
As a result of these variant tendencies, Van Dijk arrives at a formula that
captures the precarious balance in which herder-farmer symbiosis seems
to hang. He holds
[i]n order to maintain the productivity of a hectare of land for crops, there is
need for a precise number of hectares of [un-exploited] bush, which serves as
a buffer zone against ecological degradation. Once the proportion of culti-
vated land approaches this limit, the relationship between agriculture and
animal husbandry is adversely affected and may become antagonistic even
hostile …86
The final category of structural determinants of conflict indicated by
herder-farmer conflict is socio-cultural. Changes of a socio-cultural nature,
or variations in the relevance of these factors, often occur as a result of the
83 Thomas Park, ‘Privatization and Development: The Case of the Dirol Plain’, in his Risk
and Tenure in Arid Lands, The Political Ecology of Development in the Senegal River Basin,
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press 1993), pp: 224-254.
84 Ron Parker, ‘The Senegal-Mauritania Conflict of 1989: a Fragile Equilibrium’, The
Journal of Modern African Studies 29/1: 155-171 (1991).
85 Han van Dijk, ‘Régime Fanciers et Aménagement des Resources dans un Contexte
Pluriethnique et de Pluralisme Juridique’, in Youssouf Diall, and Günther Schlee (eds.)
L’Ethnicité Peule dans des Contextes Nouveaux. (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2000), pp. 37-64.
86 Ibid., p. 39.
22. 470 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
combined effects of the political, economic and environmental transfor-
mations described above. Factors on this dimension include ethnic compo-
sition, which includes changes in ethnic identities and boundaries; the
effectiveness of social norms and mores regarding intra- and inter-group
relations; the relative importance of vertical linkages in society such as clan
affiliation; and the importance of religion as a mediating factor in social
relations.
Juul (1993) noted in Senegal an accelerated trend toward the ‘diversifica-
tion of household economies employed as a risk management strategy dur-
ing and after the severe drought periods in the 1970s and beginning of the
1980s.’87 This change in household organization precipitated a decline in
historic ethnic specializations on which herder-farmer complementarities
have traditionally been forged. Wolof farmers and Peul (Fulani) herders
have long exploited comparative advantage in typical fashion: milk-grain
barter, manure contracts, and the like. With time, however, ‘tensions over
access to natural resources have become more severe as demographic pres-
sure has increased and ethnic specializations have lost their former impor-
tance.’88 This has resulted in a more conflictual posture between these
communities as they continue to face resource scarcities not from a posi-
tion of complementarity but as competitive co-exploiters.
These trends in Senegal are noteworthy because – the 1989 Senegal-
Mauritanian conflict notwithstanding – Senegal continues to enjoy a repu-
tation for exceptional stability, particularly by regional standards. One of
the most common explanations for Senegal’s success is the level of ethnic
tolerance its peoples have long exhibited.89 A recurrent explanation for
that very tolerance invokes the extensiveness of ethnic mixing90 and the
importance of extended, even fictive, kin relationships, including the cele-
brated ‘joking relationships’, which bind families, clans and even entire eth-
nic groups in satirical and often profane relations of reciprocal teasing.91
This quintessential cultural institution of conflict management92 has had
87 Kristine Juul, ‘Pastoral Tenure Problems and Local Resource Management: The Case of
Northern Senegal’, Nomadic Peoples 32: 81-90 (1993), p. 89.
88 Ibid., p. 82.
89 Makhtar Diouf, Sénégal: Les Ethnies et la Nation. (Dakar: les Nouvelles Editions
Africaines, 1998); Sheldon Gellar, Democracy in Senegal: Tocquevillian Analytics in Africa.
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
90 Cheikh Bâ, Les Peul du Sénégal: Etude Géographique. (Dakar: Les Nouvelles Editions
Africaines, 1986).
91 Cécile Canut and Étienne Smith. ‘Pactes, Alliances et Plaisanteries: Pratiques Locales,
Discours Global’, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 184: 2-44 (2006).
92 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘On Joking Relationships’, Africa, 13/3: 195-210 (1940).
23. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 471
relevance for maintaining peaceful relations between herders and farmers
throughout West Africa, but with particular effect in Senegal among Peul
herders and Serer farmers. As noted above, however, the efficacy of cultural
institutions such as these is never a constant, and varying levels of ‘conflict
carrying capacity’ of this cultural form have been described.93 Under condi-
tions of acute economic stress, for example, relations of kinship at a more
‘imagined’ level may contract in response to a more intense struggle for
survival. When this happens the ties that bind putative herding and farm-
ing ‘cousins’ may fray, weakening the overall social fabric.94 In this context
where clan affiliation constitutes an important cleavage across which soci-
etal conflict gets articulated, otherwise unremarkable incidents can very
quickly escalate to levels of considerable scale and violence. Because the
clan endows its members with corporate rights and obligations, principally
including social and physical security, a simple clash between individuals
over a seemingly modest claim of crop damage has been known to spark a
spiral of conflict triggering reciprocal demands for blood compensation.95
As this discussion makes clear, herder farmer relations often map onto
ethnic discourses. Be it among the Peul andWolof in the Senegambia, Fulbe
and RiimayBe in Mali, Fulani and Hausa in Nigeria or Arab and African in
Darfur, there is often a complex recursivity at work in the maintenance of
identities that combine with these modes of production. Faris captures
well the duality of this structural relationship in Darfur where the violence
…is usually described as racially motivated, pitting mounted Arabs against
black rebels and civilians. But the fault lines have their origins in another dis-
tinction, between settled farmers and nomadic herders fighting over failing
lands… The distinction between ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ in Darfur is defined more
by lifestyle than any physical difference: Arabs are generally herders, Africans
typically farmers. The two groups are not racially distinct.96
These ambiguities have clear relevance for the herder-farmer relations.
When the ever-fragile equilibrium between these modes of production is
upset by exogenous factors such as environmental degradation or eco-
nomic crisis, the identities of herders and farmers and the meanings
attached to them structure societal responses in critical ways. Again, Faris
describes these dynamics in Darfur.
93 Robert Launay, ‘Practical Joking’, Cahiers d'études africaines, 184: (2006).
94 Brett O’Bannon, ‘Speak no more of Cousinage?: The Political Economy of Joking
Relationships’, presented to Alliances à plaisanterie et politique(s) en Afrique de l'Ouest,
Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales, Science Po, Paris, July 27, 2005.
95 Gedi, ‘Herder-Farmer Conflicts in the Dawa-Ganale River Basin’.
96 Faris, ‘The Real Roots of Darfur’, p. 68.
24. 472 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
Until the rains began to fail, the [Arabs now constituting the Janjaweed mili-
tias] lived amicably with the settled farmers. The nomads were welcome pass-
ers-through, grazing their camels on the rocky hillsides that separated the
fertile plots. The farmers would share their wells, and the herders would feed
their stock on the leavings from the harvest. But with the drought, the farmers
began to fence off their land—even fallow land—for fear it would be ruined
by passing herds. A few tribes drifted elsewhere or took up farming, but the
Arab herders stuck to their fraying livelihoods—nomadic herding was central
to their cultural identity.97
In Darfur this meant that what Landais and Lhoste describe as the transfor-
mation of relations of complementarity into relations of competition98
began to engender violence in the late 1980s, thanks to the added political
factor of state complicity. With disturbing predictive validity, the level of
violence in the late 1980s but foretold of the genocide to come.
IV. Discussion
Consider the following two facts: (1) Every morning of every week two
Malian ministers of state, the Ministère de l’Administration du Territoire
and the Ministère de la Sécurité Intérieure receive a briefing which reports
on any clash between farmers and herders that managed to gain the atten-
tion of a state official;99 (2) In 2006, when a relatively small clash between
herders and farmers in a rural village in Niger resulted in a small number of
casualties, the Head of the West Africa Bureau of the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Dakar sent not one, but two teams
to investigate. As feared, news of this seemingly insignificant event had
already spread to the capital Niamey several hundred miles away, where it
was articulating with post 9-11/ post-Iraq international discourses. A clash
between herders and farmers was being recast as something else: an ethno-
religious contest.100
The analysis presented here suggests that neither the Malian ministers of
state nor the West Africa Bureau Chief are wasting precious bureaucratic
resources. They are, in fact, engaged in the business of conflict early warn-
ing. That they choose to monitor these relatively minor events should not
detract from the significance of their endeavours. As I have argued here,
97 Ibid.
98 Landais and Lhoste. ‘L’Association Agriculture-élevage’.
99 Personal conversation with Herve de Lys, then Head of Office for the West Africa
Bureau of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, February 2009.
100 Ibid.
25. B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474 473
they are tracking, through the use of a surrogate species of conflict poten-
tially subtle shifts in the social-structural conditions in society known to be
associated with the onset of much larger-scale violent conflict.
It is my contention that the health of herder–farmer relations indicates
the value of known structural determinants of conflict such as the degree of
ethnic polarisation or economic marginalization. I have shown how shocks
to local, national or regional political economies resonate at the structural
level across political, economic, environmental and socio-cultural dimen-
sions. These structural patterns are known conflict indicators. The problem
for early warning systems is that accounting for change in these structural
conditions is difficult, coming at high observation cost. Normally consid-
ered too difficult to track in their own right for use as data in early warning
systems, monitoring patterns in herder-farmer relations allows the observer
to tap into otherwise inaccessible structural data that can be useful in
anticipating the onset of wider-scale conflict.
Why do herder-farmer conflicts constitute a good indicator species of
conflict? Why are they analogous to the frog whose growing mortality
indicates anthropogenic disturbances in the environment? In short, few
relationships are so recursively situated in their socio-cultural and politico-
economic milieus. Few relationships are as directly mediated to such an
extent by so many ‘environmental’ factors.The degree to which farmers and
herders find themselves toward either the symbiotic or the conflictual ends
of their relationship continuum is a function of a wide array of factors,
many of which are recognised as deep-rooted, structural determinants of
violent conflict. But contrary to common assumptions about structural fac-
tors – that they are weakly and indirectly related to violent conflict – struc-
tural change is very quickly registered in the health of agro-pastoral
relationships. A wide range of structural factors associated with violent
conflict, including the availability and management of natural resources,
the effectiveness of both formal and informal institutions of governance,
the health of market mechanisms and the like, influences the ability of
herders and farmers to transcend their differences in modes of production,
lifestyles, and relationships to authority and even ethnic and religious iden-
tities. As is true with the rest of society, when these differences are over-
come, they relate to each other in mutually advantageous ways. When they
are not, structural stress builds. The indicator species of conflict measures
how well society is bearing that stress.
Herders and farmers, therefore, occupy sites of multiple, often com-
pounding, societal cleavages: ethnicity, religion, region, modes of produc-
tion or subsistence and the general ‘ways of life’ that characterise their
26. 474 B.R. O’Bannon / Global Responsibility to Protect 4 (2012) 449–474
respective communities. But neither conflict nor cooperation adequately
captures the ‘essence’ of their relationship. They remain ever sensitive to
improving and worsening conditions. The degree to which herders and
farmers engage with each other in mutually advantageous ways, typified by
the kinds of contractual obligations with which they may bind themselves
to each other, or to which these complementary relations give way to com-
petition and violence is a function in any given context of a seemingly over-
determined matrix of factors. But because of the ways in which the
relationship between sedentary agriculture and nomadic or transhumant
pastoralism is embedded in this host of structural parameters, the health of
herder-farmer relations is indicative of the status of these structural
variables.
Because of this sensitivity to structural factors, herder-farmer conflict
constitutes a ‘most sensitive species’ of conflict. Analogous to the biolo-
gists’ frog; monitoring the frequency, intensity and scale of violence associ-
ated with herder-farmer conflict, can provide warning of larger-scale civil
and inter-state conflict that merits the label ‘early.’ In viewing structural
determinants of conflict as actual variables, and not static factors of a con-
stant value, early warning systems can tap into reliable indicators of con-
flict heretofore presumed not to be ‘economically observable.’ This resolves
the early warning dilemma by not having to choose between monitoring
the more easily observed proximate and immediate causes of conflict (‘trig-
gers’ or ‘accelerators’) and those which would generate meaningfully early
warnings, such as shifts in the deep-rooted, structural determinants of
conflict.
