In early September 2021, a group of men sat in the shade of a tree in Nyang, the capital of Yirol East County. The men – some of them former cattle camp leaders – engaged in a lively discussion about livestock. In February 2021, state authorities had temporarily introduced mobile courts made up of former cattle camp leaders who successfully addressed unresolved livestock disputes and cattle raiding in Yirol East County and other counties in…

Cattle raiding, a longstanding practice among pastoralists in South Sudan, was historically governed by cultural authorities and ritual prohibitions. However, after decades of on-and-off integration into armed forces, raiders are now heavily armed, and military-style attacks claim dozens if not hundreds of lives at a time. Beginning with the emergence of the infamous Lou Nuer “White Army” in the Bor Massacre of the early 1990s, in which Riek Machar mobilized local herders to mount a…

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