Murle people

For the Somali people with origins from a branch of Hawiye clan, see Murule.

The Murle are an ethnic group residing in Pibor County, Jonglei State, South Sudan as well as in Ethiopia. They have also been referred to in the literature as Beir by the Dinka or others who got information from them. Their language is part of the Surmic language cluster, which includes some adjoining groups in Sudan, as well as some non-contiguous groups in Ethiopia.

Culture

Murle in most cases practice a blend of animism and Christianity. Elders and witches often function as trouble fixers. But they are Pastoralists in a country where localized and unpredictable shortages occur in rain, drinking water, bush fruits and cattle grass. This necessitates a partly nomadic lifestyle over large distances. As a result, in times of shortages they have frequently come into conflict with numerically larger groups, including the Dinka and Nuer.

The Murle (like the Dinka and Nuer) have a tradition in which men can only marry when they pay a bride wealth of several dozens of cows. Education and jobs are almost absent and there are very few possibilities to earn money by producing for domestic or foreign markets. As a result, the only way to acquire cows for marriage, quicker than through breeding them, is by stealing. With roads absent and normal policing almost impossible in a vast territory, Murle, Dinka and Nuer raid each other equally, unlike the more wide spread notion that only the Murle are the offenders.

The Murle have a traditional history of how their people have migrated over the years in a clockwise direction around Lake Turkana (Arensen 1983). In the 1930's they have negotiated small pockets of 'homeland' in Pibor, where they are always allowed to graze their cattle and grow crops, even when in conflict with neighbors. This homeland is far too small for their survival, so they have a common interest to be at peace with Dinka and Nuer, so that they can graze their cattle over wider areas. But the smallness of their homeland and the almost absence of police protection makes them very vulnerable in conflicts. When some of them believe that they will not get peace and sufficient water and grazing rights, survival instincts align with 'bride hunger', sometimes driving the young men into risky cattle rustling adventures against their larger neighbors.

In the north-south war many Murle sought protection with the Nuer against North-Sudanese militia and slave raiders. In those cases they were often kept almost as slaves. In 2006 Save the Children reported a few cases in which desperately poor Murle sold one of their children to Nuer, in the hope that that kid would at least be fed by others, and the remaining kids would have a bit more food each.

Massacres

In most South-Sudanese cattle cultures, the bride-wealth system, and illegal taxing by some unscrupulous local leaders stimulates young men to find excuses to steal cows from their own cousins. Local leaders then sometimes try to quell or prevent intra-tribal fighting, by directing that aggression outward, to other tribes. Also, Murle are seen by surrounding, more powerful tribes as primitive people with strong magic powers, and therefore they are often blamed for unexplained disease or theft or arson.

With the country still awash with machine guns from the north-south war, 'cattle rustling' quickly runs out of control, killing dozens or hundreds people in tit for tat escalations. Many Nuer reason that Murle are the grand children of immigrants with much less rights to use land and graze cattle. So Murle cattle, argue some Nuer, was raised on stolen grass, so most of their cattle actually belongs to the Nuer.

Along South Sudan's border with Ethiopia, a rebellion is smouldering among the Murle, with civilians caught in the conflict. ^[1] Civilians alleging torture by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) claim fingernails been torn out, burning plastic bags dripped on children to make their parents hand over weapons and the villages of Laor and the Tanyang people burned alive in their huts because rebels were suspected of spending the night in the village.^[1]

On august 18th 2011, Murle youngsters sacked and burned the air strip village of Pierri and a dozen surrounding hamlets, killing over a hundred people, abducting dozens or hundreds of children and stealing up to tens of thousands of cattle. ^[2]. One explanation might also be the drought: Pierri has one of the very few functioning dry season drinking water wells, often with thousands of people queuing for its water. Nuer have often excluded Murle from using this water.

Because Murle have very few people in the government or even speaking English, it is difficult for journalists and researchers to check any claims against the Murle.

Part of such conflicts can be prevented by sinking much more drinking water wells. Also a national conference on drinking water, land use rights and land redistribution, might help, if Murle survival needs and all their arguments are taken serious.

Also state intervention in bride wealth culture (moving it away from virtual slave trade to an exchange of intentions and nominal tokens) and strong state action against illegal taxation by local leaders in Nuer, Dinka and Murle society is needed.

Also, South-Sudan, with its enormous agricultural potential during the rainy season, needs to be connected to regional and world markets, so that through agriculture and cattle breeding, the economy can be based on something else then tit for tat theft.

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b} "Sudan: Transcending tribe". Aljazeera.net/english, LLC. http://english.aljazeera.net/photo_galleries/africa/201111010324526960.html. Retrieved 2011-04-30. 
2. ^ |title:South Sudan attacks 'leave 500 dead||date august 20 2011|http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14595368

References

• Arensen, Jonathan E. 1982. Murle grammar. Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages, 2. Juba: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Juba.
• Arensen, Jonathan E. 1983. Sticks and straw: Comparative house forms in southern Sudan and northern Kenya. International Museum of Cultures Publication, 13. Dallas: International Museum of Cultures.
• Arensen, Jonathan E. 1991. Aspects of language and society among the Murle of Sudan. D.Phil. thesis. Wolfson College, Oxford University.
• Arensen, Jonathan E. 1992. Mice are men: Language and society among the Murle of Sudan. International Museum of Cultures Publication, 27. Dallas: International Museum of Cultures.
• Arensen, Jonathan E. 1998. Murle categorization. In Gerrit Dimmendaal and Marco Last (eds.), Surmic languages and cultures, 181-218. Nilo-Saharan, 13. Cologne: R. Köppe.
• Lewis, B.A. 1972. The Murle: Red Chiefs and Black Commoners. Oxford University at the Clarendon Press.
• Payne, Thomas. 2006. Explaining Language Structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

External links

[1] http://www.gurtong.org/resourcecenter/people/profile_tribe.asp?TribeID=86