The Nuer Tribe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

The Nuer Tribe - Essay Example Central Sudan, where the capital Khartoum is located, is the urban region where most of the population resides. Speaking 300 different languages, the different tribes have a history of infighting since time immemorial. Famine and the almost incessant fighting between the tribes have always been catalysts for the social and economic deterioration of Sudan (Sharp 147). The main ethnic tribes are the Dinka (12%), Nuba (8%), Beja (6%), Nuer (5%) and Azande (3%) (Lye 294). Probably the most important of these is the Nuer tribe not only because its habitat, the swamps of Sudd, might contain vast oil deposits that is currently being explored by Chevron Oil Company (Luciani 88) but it is 'the largest political segment of a people defined by a common language and a sense of common identity" and "the tribe was the largest population who not only claims a common territory but acknowledge the right of their members to compensation for injury" (Bhushan & Malik 106). southern Sudan in the region called the Sudd, which is a Nile-fed swamp as large as the US state of Maine. The Nuer tribe habitat is therefore the flood-plains of the White Nile and its tributaries and extends southwards to Abyssinia (Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories 325). The Nuer habitat is about 500 kilometers south of Khartoum. The Nuer tri The Nuer tribe is part of the 3 major Nilotic tribes in southern Sudan, the other two being the Dinka and the Shilluk tribes, which physically bear resemblance to each other but each speak different languages and has its own customs and traditions. As a people, the Nuer tribe is divided into clans that in the 1930 census were identified to have numbered to 17 clans with a total population of 247,000 and which are scattered throughout southern Sudan in their own villages. Each clan averages about 14,529 Nuers in the 1930 census which had grown to 35,351 Nuers per clan in the 1955 census (Kelly 161). Recent years have placed the Nuer population at 1.5 million. The different Nuer clans are predatory and are very successful in their belligerent activities because albeit scattered, they are unified, manifesting capacity to unite on a large scale and to organize swift large-scale raids. The Nuer internal unity and its organizational skills are impressive unlike its main warfare victim, th e Dinka tribe groups which are "politically autonomous and do not unite in warfare or for any other purpose". A chink in the Nuer unity and kinship however shows, when a few Nuer clans i.e. the Jagei, the Western Jikany and Eastern Jikany oftentimes clash not only with the Dinka enemy but also with fellow Nuer clans (Kelly 160). The Nuer clans always fight for territorial expansion and this expansionism and predisposition to territorial appropriation had been rooted in the Nuer sociocultural system (Kelly 226). Since early times, the Nuer tribes