Gogrial East County, Warrap State

DEMOGRAPHY

2008 NBS Census population: 103,283
2021 NBS PES population estimate*: 273,977
2022 UN OCHA population estimate*: 131,128

Ethnic groups: Rek Dinka (Apuk-Giir: Abior, Abuok Nyarmong, Adoor, Amuk, Apol, Biong, Buoyar, and Jurmananger)

Displacement Figures Q3 2022:: 19,965 IDPs (-1,398 Q1 2020) and 41,922 returnees (+29,492 Q1 2020)

IPC Food Security: November 2022 – Emergency (Phase 4); IPC Projections: December 2022 to March 2023 – Emergency (Phase 4); April to July 2023 – Emergency (Phase 4)

ECONOMY & LIVELIHOODS

Gogrial East County is located in Warrap State. It borders Gogrial West County to the west, Twic County to the north-west and Tonj North County to the south-east. It also borders Unity State (Mayom County) to the north-east and has a narrow border with Western Bahr el-Ghazal (Jur River County) to the south-west.

The county falls within the western floodplain sorghum and cattle livelihoods zone according to FEWSNET (2018). The county is primarily constituted of flat grasslands, with the Jur River cutting through northern Gogrial East. The majority of communities in Gogrial East are agro-pastoralist, engaged in cattle rearing (43%), subsistence farming (32%), and fishing (32%) (IOM 2013). According to a more recent study by FAO and WFP (2018), approximately 60% of households are estimated to engage in agriculture, which increased to 70% by 2021 (FAO/WFP 2022). Planting is conducted during the rainy season and the main crops are maize, sorghum, millet, sesame, and groundnuts. In 2021, gross cereal yields were estimated to be 0.75 tonnes per hectare, increasing to 0.8 tonnes per hectare in 2022 (FAO/WFP 2023). Fishing has increasingly become a viable livelihood in the county.

Pastoralists throughout Gogrial East – as well as pastoralists from as far as Abyei in the north to Lakes and Unity States in the east – migrate during the dry season, in search of water in various parts of the northeastern and eastern Warrap State. Livelihoods can be disrupted by seasonal disputes and cattle raiding. The half of Gogrial East County that lies south-west of the Jur River is known as the pathuon and contains sandy, semi-arid soil. It is the location of permanent settlements and wet season cultivation. To the north-east of the river is the toic (seasonally flooded grassland), which hosts dry-season grazing and islands of permanent settlement and cultivation. This toic borders Unity state. Gogrial West sits to the west of this region. The Aguok section of Gogrial West County have no significant toic and, therefore, have long sought access to the toic in Gogrial East for grazing. While the Kuac section (also from Gogrial West) have access to a smaller toic to the south, they often prefer the toic of Gogrial East due to the quality of the grass and the lack of disease.

In November 2022, the IPC projected Gogrial East County as being at an emergency (IPC level 4) level of food insecurity, with conditions projected to persist at the same level until at least July 2023. A 2020 REACH assessment found residents in 84% of assessed settlements reportedly coping with food scarcity by going days without eating and residents in 59% of settlements were consuming wild foods known to make people sick. Residents in 73% of the settlements assessed in Gogrial East reported selling livestock to cope with a lack of food. Whilst a 2022 REACH assessment showed some improvements across food security indicators, it noted that 65% of assessed settlements consumed wild foods known to make people sick.

Trade routes bring goods from Wau town to serve local markets in the county, however during the rainy season secondary roads become impassable at times. The main markets for the county are found in Liet-Nohm, Kuony Aker and Ajogo. In additional to the market in Wau, Sudan remains a preferred source of goods with traders procuring goods from Juba when commodities are not available from sources in Sudan. Additionally, transport difficulties continue to be a challenge as do the over 30 checkpoints traders report encountering between Juba and Kuajok market.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICES

The county’s headquarters are located in Liet-Nhom in Toc(h) East Payam. An EU-funded project to build a bridge has made the county better connected to other large towns, such as Kuajok (the state capital), which supports the supply of trade goods and supplies for basic services. Despite the addition of the bridge, the road system within Gogrial East is limited, and there are no notable roads in the entire eastern portion of the county connecting Gogrial East to Tonj North.

According to OCHA’s Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2023, there are approximately over 103,100 people in Gogrial East with humanitarian needs (similar to the 102,900 people in need in 2021), which represents almost 79% of the estimated population for the county reported in the HNO. In 2019, the county was identified as one of fourteen counties in South Sudan with the highest level (“extreme”) of GBV needs. Recent IDPs and returnees in the area have placed additional pressure on local infrastructure and services.

While some schools may have been damaged in recent years, Gogrial East County is home to ten (10) Early Childhood Development centres, one hundred and twenty-nine (129) primary schools and eleven (11) secondary schools located across the county.

Gogrial East County was reported to have fifteen (15) health facilities, all of which were regarded as functional in 2022. Among these facilities are thirteen (13) PHCUs and two (2) PHCCs in 2022. This means that there were an estimated 1.49 PHCUs per 15,000 people and 0.76 PHCCs per 50,000 people according to the WHO. No hospitals were reported in Gogrial East County.

CONFLICT DYNAMICS

Greater Gogrial was historically regarded as a particularly isolated area of Greater Bahr el-Ghazal, and was belatedly and partially integrated into British colonial administration, with only a limited colonial presence in the area (Cormack 2014). Despite this historical perception and the geographical remoteness of Gogrial, elites from Gogrial – alongside their counterparts from the comparatively accessible Greater Tonj area – have come to play a profound role in South Sudanese politics, including President Salva Kiir who is from Akon in Gogrial West.

Gogrial was particularly affected during the first and second Sudanese civil wars (1955-1972 and 1983-2005), through both direct violence by Sudanese police forces and military, and raiding by government-aligned Misseriya militias. As the second civil war progressed, multiple rounds of fighting between the SPLM/A and Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) created conditions for famine in the late 1980s and in 1998, with the Sudanese government maintaining control over the town for most of the war and intra-SPLM/A factional disputes having an acute effect on physical and food security in the area during the late 1990s (Cormack 2014; Madut-Arop 2006). During the 1990s, the Mayen Rual common market contributed to harmonious relations between the Apuk, Kuac, and Aguok sections of the Rek Dinka, though the market has declined since the end of the war in 2005 (Pendle and Madut Anei 2018). Since this time, two rounds of serious internal conflict among Dinka sections have affected the area (in 2007-2008 and 2015-2017), whilst cross-border violence with part of the Nuer community of Unity State (particularly from Mayom County) have resulted in several phases of highly lethal cattle raiding.

Although Gogrial was not directly affected by the national conflict (2013-2018), the government recruited heavily from the area in 2014, with the SSPDF and National Security Service (NSS) also reportedly engaged in significant recruitment from the area after the R-ARCSS in 2018 (Boswell 2019; UN Panel of Experts 2019). SSPDF recruitment in late 2018 and early 2019 laid the foundation for the establishment of the new 11^th Division of the army. Despite the alleged extensive recruitment of youth from Greater Gogrial, resistance to recruitment was also reported following the outbreak of the national conflict (McCrone 2021, pp.10-11). The UN Human Rights Commission has also reported that forced recruitment and abductions of children occurred during the post-R-ARCSS recruitment in the Gogrial area (UN HRC 2020, pp. 12-13, 26-27).

As with Greater Tonj, the centrality of elites from Gogrial in the politics of Juba has not been associated with significant improvements in social or economic infrastructure within Greater Gogrial, and has created a number of vulnerabilities to conflict owing to the interaction between elites operating at the local and national levels. Elites from Warrap have particularly strong access to both the government and resources from Juba, which derives in part from the level of support and new recruits delivered to the national government and security services over many decades, including during the 2013-2018 national conflict. However, since the signing of the R-ARCSS in 2018, elite competition in Juba has informed conflict in much of Warrap, including in Gogrial East.

Border and land disputes have been a particular focal point for conflict in Greater Gogrial. However, rather than being purely localised phenomenon, land and boundary issues are in part an expression of elite competition for control over administrative and land-based resources (Craze 2022, pp.21-25; de Waal and Pendle 2019, pp.190-191; McCrone 2021, p.13). The contestation of land and boundaries in Gogrial East emerged as a direct result of changes to political ordering surrounding the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the 2011 declaration of independence. In 2004, Greater Gogrial was divided into Gogrial East and Gogrial West counties, with Twic county having been previously separated out. Although the division was a government decision justified by the argument that Greater Gogrial was too large, the division was also interpreted in some communities as an assertion of power of the Apuk section. In addition to contributing to serious conflict in 2007 and 2008, the division of these counties created disputes over boundaries that continue today. .

While subnational conflicts are often characterized as natural resource conflicts, the relationships between communities and key natural resources – like relative high ground, pastures, and water points – is therefore highly dynamic and informed by both historical legacies and contemporary issues. In reality it is rare that an absolute scarcity in resources leads to violence – it is more often the real or perceived exclusion and threat of exclusion from key resources that drives conflict. Indeed, violence in Gogrial East has generally accompanied attempts at maintaining or reversing uneven access to administrative control for certain populations or to seasonal natural resources (for example, see comment in ‘Economy & Livelihoods’ above about competition over pasture).

As with much of the conflict that takes place among mostly Dinka elites and communities internal to Greater Gogrial, cross-border raiding has tended to have connections with political and/or military networks. In the run-up to South Sudanese independence in 2011, serious violence involving cattle raiders from Unity State was reported in Gogrial East (AFP 2010; Sudan Tribune 2011). In 2014 and 2015, cattle raiders from Warrap State (allegedly supported by SPLA soldiers) launched raids in Mayom County, in spite of the fact that many of Mayom’s Bul Nuer military elite were aligned to the SPLA during the national conflict (Craze et al. 2016). Serious cross-border violence between Warrap and Unity states involving retaliatory attacks and raiding was reported in 2019 (UN HRC 2020, p.32) as is discussed further in the profile for Twic County. Meanwhile, raiding into Gogrial East increased in 2021 and 2022, with a dispute in Gamdhang market in May 2022 escalating into a fight between local youths and Bul Nuer youths that reportedly killed 21 people (Radio Tamazuj 2022).

Pastoralists from Gogrial East are among those from Warrap State who cross into Western Bahr el-Ghazal State during the dry season. Cattle migration has been associated with tensions between various sections of the Rek Dinka and parts of the Luo of Jur River County, with violence between the two communities in recent years tending to involve SSPDF and SPLA-IO elements on either side. Following extensive negotiations, the Marial Bai Agreement was signed in 2016 to help regulate the movement of pastoralist communities in the area, whilst establishing restrictions on the carrying of firearms into Western Bahr el-Ghazal. The agreement also established the compensation to be paid for damage caused to crops by cattle, and for the killing of cattle by farmers (VNG International, n.d.). This contributed to increased stability and a reduction of violence in the border areas between the two states, though underlying grievances have not in all cases been adequately addressed. However, tensions have escalated into violent confrontation at several points following the signing of the agreement, most notably during the first half of 2019, as is discussed further in the profile for Jur River County (Eye Radio 2019). A review of the agreement was conducted in late 2019, and included provisions for a mobile court, while a subsequent review during the pre-migration conference in Kuajok in late 2021 drew attention to the need for the agreement to place greater emphasis upon gender-based violence and associated justice mechanisms (UNMISS 2021).

In August 2023, fighting also broke out in the contested area of Manyang along the border between south-western Gogrial East and north-eastern Jur River, displacing an unspecified number of residents. The fighting – which is reportedly between parts of the Apuk-Giir section and the community of Marial Wau (a.k.a. Marial Bai, a predominantly Dinka area of Jur River) – escalated in late 2023, with around 20 people reportedly killed across November and leading to a heavy deployment of security forces in the area (The Radio Community 2023a; The Radio Community 2023b). Fighting was reported in the same area at the end of the year (The Radio Community 2024).

ADMINISTRATION & LOGISTICS

Payams: Toc(h) East (County Headquarters in Liet-Nhom), Toc(h) North, Toc(h) West, Nyang, Pathoun East, Pathoun West

UN OCHA 2020 map of Gogrial East County: https://reliefweb.int/map/south-sudan/south-sudan-gogrial-east-county-reference-map-march-2020

 Roads:

• A primary road connects Lunyaker in the south of the county to Wau town (Western Bahr-el Ghazal State), with the condition of the road being unknown.
• A network of secondary and tertiary roads runs through Gogrial East, including a road running north from Lunyaker to Mayom town (in Mayom County), and several smaller roads running east or west into Tonj North and Gogrial West counties, respectively. Seasonal road conditions are unknown.

 UNHAS-recognised Heli and Fixed-Wing Airplane Airstrips: None

Additional MAF-Recognised Airstrips: Lietnhom

REFERENCES

AFP. (2010). Deaths reported as South Sudan rival tribes clash. Retrieved from UNMIS Media Monitoring Report (12 January 2010) on 20 October 2023.

Boswell, A. (2019). Insecure Power and Violence: The Rise and Fall of Paul Malong and the Mathiang Anyoor. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Cormack, Z.T. (2014). The Making and Remaking of Gogrial: Landscape, history and memory in South Sudan. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Cormack, Z.T. (2017). The spectacle of death: visibility and concealment at an unfinished memorial in South Sudan. Journal of Eastern African Studies 11 (1), pp. 115–132. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

Craze, J. (2022). ‘And Everything Became War:’ Warrap State Since the Signing of the R-ARCSS. Small Arms Survey/HSBA. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Craze, J., Tubiana, J. and Gramizzi, C. (2016). A State of Disunity: Conflict Dynamics in Unity State, South Sudan, 2013–15. Small Arms Survey/HSBA. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

Eye Radio. (2019). Governor calling for review of Marial-bai agreement. Retrieved 12 January 2024.

FAO/WFP. (2023). Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to South Sudan. Retrieved 31 July 2023. See equivalent versions of the CFSAM report online for data from previous years.

FEWSNET. (2018). Livelihoods Zone Map and Descriptions for the Republic of South Sudan (Updated). Retrieved 10 July 2023.

IOM. (2013). Village Assessment Survey: County Atlas. Retrieved from https://iomsouthsudan.org/tracking/sites/default/publicfiles/documents/Warrap_GogrialEast_Atlas.pdf

Madut-Arop, A. (2006). Sudan’s Painful Road to Peace: A Full Story of the Founding and Development of SPLM/SPLA. Booksurge Publishing.

McCrone, F. (2021). The war (s) in South Sudan: local dimensions of conflict, governance and the political marketplace. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Radio Tamazuj. (2022). 21 killed, 22 wounded in Gogrial East County market clashes. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

Radio Tamazuj. (2023). Warrap governor, MPs survive armed attack in Gogrial East County. Retrieved 5 January 2024.

REACH. (2020). Integrated Needs Tracking (INT) County Profile – Gogrial East County. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

REACH. (2022). Integrated Needs Tracking (INT) County Profiles. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Sudan Tribune. (2011). Clashes claims over 80 lives in Warrap state. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

The Radio Community. (2023a). Joint force restores calm in disputed Manyang. Retrieved 5 January 2024.

The Radio Community. (2023b). Apuk-Wau fighting claims 11 lives. Retrieved 5 January 2024.

The Radio Community. (2024). Fighting between Apuk and Wau resumed, leaving three dead. Retrieved 5 January 2024.

UN HRC. (2020). Report of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, A/HRC/43/56. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

UNMISS. (2021). To prepare for seasonal cattle movement, the UN family supports a pre-migration conference in Kuajok. Retrieved 12 January 2024.

VNG International (n.d.). Crops and Cows: The Potential of Cattle Migration Management in South Sudan. Retrieved 12 January 2024.

de Waal, A. and Pendle, N. (2019). ‘Decentralisation and the logic of the political marketplace in South Sudan’ in Deng, L. and Logan, S. (eds) The Struggle for South Sudan: Challenges of Security and State Formation, 172–194. London: I.B. Tauris.

REPORTS on GOGRIAL EAST

Cormack, Z.T. (2014). The Making and Remaking of Gogrial: Landscape, history and memory in South Sudan. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Cormack, Z. (2016). Borders are galaxies: Interpreting contestations over local administrative boundaries in South Sudan. Africa, 86 (3), 504-527. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Diing, A. and Pendle, N. (2021). ‘I Kept My Gun’: Displacement’s Impact on Reshaping Social Distinction During Return, Journal of Refugee Studies, 33 (4), 791-812. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

IOM. (2013). Village Assessment Survey: County Atlas. Profile for Gogrial East unavailable online as of 16 August 2023.

McCrone, F. (2021). The war (s) in South Sudan: local dimensions of conflict, governance and the political marketplace. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Pendle, N. (2015). ‘“They Are Now Community Police”: Negotiating the Boundaries and Nature of the Government in South Sudan through the Identity of Militarised Cattle-keepers’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 22(3), 410-434. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Pendle, N.  (2018). ‘The dead are just to drink from’: recycling ideas of revenge among the western Dinka, South Sudan. Africa, 88 (1), 99-121. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Pendle, N. and Madut Anei, C. (2018). Wartime Trade and the Reshaping of Power in South Sudan: Learning from the market of Mayen Rual. Rift Valley Institute. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Pendle, N. (2023). Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan. Rochester, NY: James Currey. Open access eBook retrieved 18 July 2023.

Pendle, N. (2023). Law and Famine: Learning from the Hunger Courts in South Sudan. Development and Change 54(3), 467–489. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

Saferworld. (2018). Communities tackling small arms and light weapons in South Sudan: lessons learnt and best practices. Retrieved 18 July 2023.

* Note: The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Population Estimation Survey (PES) was published in April 2023 based on data collected in May-June 2021. This uses a different method to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Population Working Group (PWG) figures produced based on a combination of 2008 census data and population movement data up to 2022. The large discrepancies are primarily attributable to these different methods rather than changes in the actual population numbers over time and have been disputed by some civil society and analysts. Although the later PWG figures were produced more recently for the HNO 2023, at the request of the Government of South Sudan the data and method used by the PES is being used as the basis for the Common Operational Dataset (COD) for the UN system for the HNO 2024 and likely beyond. For further detail on this and other sources used in the county profiles, see the accompanying Methodological Note.