Masculinities in conflict in Casamance by Tomas Serna Salichs - HTML preview

Masculinities in conflict in Casamance

By Tomas Serna Salichs

Abstract

This paper proposes an engendered picture of one of the oldest low intensity conflicts in

Africa, the conflict in Casamance. Reflecting on how gender affects the conflict and how

gender has been affected by the conflict this paper search for opportunities to be

explored for current peace initiatives that focus on the combatants.

Introduction

The conflict in Casamance, Senegal, is one of the oldest low intensity conflicts in the

continent. Atika, the armed wing of the MFDC, Movement of democratic forces of

Casamance, claims the independence of this territory between the Gambia and Guinea

Bissau. After several contradictions, internal and external conflicts its forces

fragmented1. Today one of the main wings of Atika is based in the Guinea Bissau

border under commandment of Cesar Atout Badiate, a Christian / Animist Diola from

Oussouye district. The other, based in the Gambia border, is under the commandment

of Salif Sadio, Muslim Diola from the Fogny zone. Both are reliant of external direct or

indirect support, the one from Bissau allegiances, and the second from Banjul

loyalties.

President Abdoulaye Wade administration from 2000 to 2012 failed to install a

definitive peace process. The Peace agreement signed in 2004 only permitted to

comply with donor exigencies in order to get funding for development and

reconstruction (Marut). Combats between independentist and Senegalese troops kept

1 In 2006 the Guinean army engaged several “clean up” military operations close to the border resulting in the defeat of Salif

Sadio, one of MFDC-‐Atika commanders who escaped capture under intense fighting through the Senegalese lines and arrived to

the Gambian border. The tacit support of the moderate MFDC-‐Atika wing under commandment of Cesar Atout Badiate

consolidated their internal discrepancy. In 2009 during the failure of the attack to Ziguinchor, the main Casamancese city, by

Cesar A. Badiate a new group separated under commandment of Niantang. Since then the conflict has entered in a relatively

lower intensity phase

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on. After Wades defeat, the new administration of President Macky Sall (April 2012)

opened room for international negotiations as an alternative of considering the

question as a domestic problem, and sat up a major procedural improvement to

assemble a definite peace process.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how gender has been affected by this conflict

and to search for opportunities to be explored for current peace initiatives. We are

not pretending to study the conflict as such in its protracted dimensions (Pugh), but

proposing a focus in topics related to the combatants, that is, the armed movement.

Scholar’s discussions if the Casamancese independent political movement is

historically an ethnic movement, where Diola people play a centered role, or not are

copious. We are not entering in this discussion, but we are considering the fact that

the Casamancese MFDC Atika armed forces belong in its majority to the Diola groups.

The first part of the paper will interrogate about patriarchy in Diola culture. Albeit we

are aware of the specificities of other Diola groups, we will consider here that there is

a major strong cultural break between the Animist and Christian Diola, whose

majority are in the left side of the river: that is, the Floup (Oussouye), Diamat (Youtou,

Effoc), Dyiwat (Djembereng), Her (Kabrousse), Brin (Bandial) and Karone, and the

Muslim Diola, that is, the Diola Fogny2 whose majority is particularly influenced by the

Mandingo cultural colonization during the end of the XIX siècle of the right side of the

river Casamance. Although there is room for discussion in this topic we here consider

that Christians Diola are culturally closer to Aninimists and share their same space.

Generally speaking Cesar Atout Badiate MFDC-‐Atika wing is leaded by a majority of

people belonging to the first group, while Salif Sadio MFDC-‐Atika wing is identified

with the second group.

The particular role of women in the Diola Animist environment will be one of our

center of interest as well as how this role is different within the Diola that have

received the Mandingo and Islam’s cultural influence. We will analyze how men’s

power over women is expressed in two arenas: public patriarchy, or every thing

2 Following Louis Vincent Thomas, Les diola, Essai dánalyse fonctionnelle sur une population de basse casamance, IFAN Dakar

1958

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“referring to the institutional arrangements of a society, the predominance of males in

all power positions within the economy and polity”, and domestic patriarchy referring

“to the emotional and familial arrangements in a society, the ways in which men’s power

in the public arena is reproduced at the level of private life”3. At the same time, we will

have a particular interest about how women relate to land heritage and property.

Besides we will think about masculinities in Casamance, trying as well to differentiate

between both cultural spaces exploring in both cases the model of masculinity against

which each man measures himself.

We will then analyze how gender has been influenced by the conflict and particularly

the impact of conflict on men and masculinities. We will focus on combatants, men

affected by poverty as a result of the conflict, youth unemployment, the phenomenon

of the new young combatants and the effects of disempowerment. We will analyze as

well the role of women in the conflict. Under this chapter we will study how women

have engaged in peace building and also why they have not reached the confidence of

combatants.

By splitting the two identified main cultural realities we expect to find different

masculinities. We will then identify hypotheses of action and opportunities to be

explored for peace initiatives.

Patriarchy and masculinities in the Diola of Casamance

The everyday living of the Animist Diola is embedded in culture and tradition.

Traditional Diola society is patriarchal: filiation is masculine, that is, children take

their fathers name who is the chief of the family, but the type of family life is strongly

maternal. Until our days the mother’s brother, the mother and the sister’s sun

constitute the main triangle of the Diola society, being the mother the central element

(Ki Zerbo). The Asampul, that is, all men from the mother’s family, have significant

missions like supervising children education, building the coffin in case of death,

digging the grave, carry the cadaver for interrogation and bury (Thomas). Finally

3 Kimmel Michael, Global Masculinities: Restoration and Resistance, Gender Policy Review

3

Diola women, who keep the fathers name, have more authority in their role as sister

and mother than in their role as wife.

Even if their position is significant, Diola women do not participate in the

transmission of the land, which is the first resource of the group. Women don’t have

big responsibilities in the management and transmission of the resources of its

parental original group. Nevertheless they will ever be linked to their original family.

When married, they bring with them their labor force, particularly the capacity of

planting rice and in many cases they are in charge of the management and protection

of the household granaries. In one of the Animist Diola groups, the Bandial, women

receive a part of their parents rice fields. Women are considered as linked to the land,

the rice fields, where in collective working journeys men labor and women plant.

In case of divorce Diola women can always turn back home if they don’t want to rest

in their husband family. Widows can reside on their husbands family: one of the

husbands brother, the one she will choose, will take care of her. In any case they can

decide to turn back home to her parental family.

Diola women, due to her particular functions linked to the land, are placed in a

paradox situation of autonomy / dependence from her parental family and her

husband family. Without participating to the sharing and transmission of the rice

fields, they actively contribute to the prosperity of their husband lineage. In a global

societal perspective they have a concrete economic and juridical role in terms of land

management (Ki Zerbo). Furthermore Diola women possess powerful shrines, faired

and respected by all men, this representing as well a significant dimension of their

particular position. Their maternal role being as well culturally emphasized, Diola

women have a relatively high degree of personal, social and economic autonomy.

This whole picture shows a societal environment characterized by solidarity and

certain horizontality, where the role manifests the status through functions that are

complementary in the community.

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Mandinga peoples invaded the Diola Fogny, situated between the Gambia border and

the Casamance River, during difficult wars resulting in Islamisation. In Fogny villages,

following Hesselin, “Islam hasn’t offered a new society model “complete enough”,

coherent and efficient to substitute the ancient social and related to land tenure

structures”4. The result is a complex system where the traditional mechanisms are

contested and conflicts arise with frequency. This new system, embedded on

Islamisation, has particularly affected the traditional women position, resulting in

improved insecurity, less shared labor responsibilities and a stronger patriarchy. An

important change experienced by mandingised Diola is a progressive hierarchisation

of the society. Inequalities are stronger between elders and young’s, chiefs and clients,

and also between original families and immigrants (Hesseling). This had inevitable

consequences related to domestic patriarchy.

In the Animist theater masculinities are manifested in collective demonstrations like

agriculture works during the rice labor, organized by age generations groups.

Strength and talent are demonstrated in the yearly wrest competitions between

villages as well as during the traditional Ekonkon dancing’s preceding and announcing

them. The religious initiation of young men, the bukut and kahat, two similar but

opposed customary rules , are as well needed stages. Those important moments are

determinant for the affirmation of Diola masculinity and identity; they are always

lived as events of participation and contribution in the group.

The Diola Fogny experience of young men has not the same collective background of

agricultural labor. Furthermore some of the traditional ceremonies and events have

disappeared, like the wrestling or the bukut, other remain but its sense has been

strongly transformed by Islam influences. Diola Fogny masculinity is much more

embedded of modernity, this meaning, been manifested in stronger individuality.

Both environments nurture the maquis. Combatants of different origins are mixed

within both wings; they share their similarities, and are confronted with their

contradictions.

4 HESSELING Gerti, La terre, à qui est-‐elle ? Les pratiques foncières en Basse-‐Casamance, Comprendre la Casamance

5

Men and masculinities in conflict in Casamance

Combatants are absent head of families. Their women had to lead the family and take

care of the field works. Depending the degree of collectivization of the village, their

suns, the men in the husband family and the village itself will take care of the

household rice fields. Indeed, Fogny women will probably experiment stronger

difficulties. Women being mother and father of the family at the same time this bring

strong frustrations and anxiety to their combatant husbands and imply more charges

resulting in enhanced poverty in their brothers and relatives. The more the women

take responsibility the more the position of men is challenged.

Other damaging impact of the conflict is consequence of the absence of the father as

protector. The family is vulnerable to bandits and girls are more vulnerable to sexual

aggression or offence, particularly from military elements. As a result of wanted and

non-‐wanted intercourse with soldiers affected in Casamancese villages, the number of

under-‐aged mothers have increased, this being source of frustration and disturbance

for number of families5.

As a consequence of the conflict, for young Diola men to be able to marry, found a

family and become social adult after having being initiated in bukut or kahat is

becoming a huge challenge. They face the scarcity of economic opportunities and

unemployment. The image of a prosper Senegal enhances their sensation of exclusion.

The difficulties for school attendance have improved during the conflict resulting in

significant failures in secondary school. This painful situation has promoted migration

and also encouraged engagement in the maquis.

However for Casamancese young men migration to Dakar is challenged by two major

inconvenients: on the one hand, they are called rebels and are stereotyped there, on

the other hand, they are confronted to the fact that Casamancese women are much

more adapted to the labor market than themselves. As a consequence of their known

honesty and dedication Diola women are preferred as house staff by medium class

5 World Bank, Gender and conflict in the Casamance Analytical Report

6

Senegalese and expatriates families in Dakar. On the contrary young Diola men in

Dakar are confronted to economic exploitation or unemployment, and consequently,

to be supported by their sisters.

Consequently one of the alternatives is illegal migration to Europe through adventurer

boats to the Canary Islands, or through the desert to Libya. Other alternative, finally

the most sensate, is to be engaged by the MFDC Atika. This implies to adopt a severe

way of life in the barracks of the liberated forests, and to employ the capabilities

acquired in the villages since children-‐hood, abilities that are based in the traditional

heritage. As a result young Casamancese men persist at risk of engaging in violent

conflict. Incredibly or not number of young men join the combatants –themselves

disempowered-‐ as their only way to reveal against disempowerment and frustration.

These new recruited men belong to a different generation; a much more globalised

one. The thirty-‐year-‐old maquis is then confronted to a clash of generations. Following

our interviewees, discipline and resignation within the new recruited seem to be lost

values, and difficult to inculcate.

We have found some of the cleavage of the two main Diola environments we have

presented in the leadership styles of the two main big wings of the Casamancese

maquis. Salif Sadio is a strong leader, known by his violence and cruelty, having

severely executed several of his men. Bearer of a strong education he has a clear

discourse, and a penchant to use his personal charm in media interventions6. He acts

as a star, a vedette, a visible uniqueness able to eliminate any adversary by all means.

In his maquis his leadership is unquestionable, he is on the top of a hierarchic military

scale.

Cesar Atout Badiate stile is quite different. He is a commandant of commandants, a

speaker who doesn’t decide without appealing their men in conference. His decisions

seem to be taken in joint meetings. He is not eloquent, he has not the ability of facing

the media; he is a soldier. Cesar Atout Badiate has his own political wing in charge of

relationships and declarations remaining in the maquis. His management style seems

6 From Sud FM Ziguinchor media during the release of Senegalese military hostages in 2012

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to imitate the traditional collective way stressing in complementarities and

horizontality. He states what has been stated.

Both personalities translate different masculinities, that is, different ways against

which each measures himself as a man in the maquis.

Women and the conflict in Casamance

Women are in the origin of the Casamancese conflict. The violent and

counterproductive repression by Senegalese authorities of a pacific women’s protest

march in 1982 in Ziguinchor points the beginning of the armed struggle. Women were

attacked, elders mistreated and holy places invaded. In Diola culture neither women

nor children shall be harmed. This explains the immediate organization of the violent

reaction. Women have been since then involved in the armed struggle, providing

moral support to combatants and performing quite a lot of tasks from logistics to

rituals, but never as combatants. Diola women social position allows them to

participate in family decisions whether or not to support one or other side in the

conflict. This has contributed to the fact that combatants remain socially attached.

Women and children are the main victims of the conflict. Women remain responsible

of their household. If they are the new head of the family they have to take care of the

field works. As relatives, they have to receive their refugees and displaced parents in

their homes. Scarci