342 Scarcity and Surfeit
encroachment onto lands occupied by other farmers and agro-pastoralists.
Many 'displaced' pastoralists from the north are part of powerful alliances to
defend claims to land and resources and have thereby occupied land of farm-
ers from weaker clan alliances. Displaced farmers in the Jubba River valley
have either emigrated elsewhere, agreed to become sheegad of the pastoral-
ists, or have competed to recapture deegaan lost to other clans.65
The nature of the conflicts has changed since colonial times from recipro-
cal raiding of land and resources to the use of heavy weapons to establish
exclusive control over valuable land and natural resources. Indeed, the use of
modern automatic weapons, whether heavy or light, has intensified the con-
flict between the Ogaden and the Marehan." To contain disputes and con-
flict, the colonial government tried separating the various clans by creating
buffer zones and regulating grazing blocks between them. Through these
measures, the colonial government managed to contain the conflicts between
the various clans over water wells and grazing lands. In these arrangements
each clan had a defined zone for livestock grazing and their areas of opera-
tion~.~' During the pre-colonial and colonial eras before guns were widely
available, the power of the spear determined control of deegaan.
Yet the nature of conflicts in Jubbaland changed during Somalia's post-
independence period. This is because the independent Somalia government
rarely regulated grazing zones for different clans. Instead, certain clans like
the Marehan received preferential rights to grazing lands and access to gov-
ernment resources and technical advice. The Barre government settled large
numbers of its Marehan clanspeople in the major port city of Kismayu. The
Marehan then controlled not only the government, but also regulated and
benefited from the trade that passed through the city. There were various
attempts to settle pastoralists among the farmers along the Jubba River and
in urban areas, as described earlier.
The present intense conflict in the Jubbaland dates back to the days of the
Siad Barre's regime when large numbers of people were settled in the
Jubbaland, displacing customary inhabitants who were in many cases
forcibly removed from their farm lands and settlements. For example, the
Barre government favoured the Marehan clan and to a lesser extent the
Ogaden clans, but marginalised and excluded the other clans that inhabited
the region. The Bantu and the Rer Goled, for instance, were not allowed to
own large tracts of land and were confined to smaller acreages along the
Jubba River where they survived as smallholder peasants. Lack of a known
mechanism for sharing resources has worsened conflict because different
sub-clans move across a wide area with no clearly marked boundaries. Since
there are no clearly delineated boundary lines between sub-clans, mobility of
one sub-clan into the area of another causes localised competitions over
scarce resources, but which are connected to national and regional political
devdnnments.