Property Right Conflict and Contestation in Global South: A Case from Eritrea

Abstract

Despite their longevity and direct impact on peasants, land conflicts in Eritrea remain neglected. By scrutinizing conflict cases reported to and deposited at Adiquala sub-region and by probing more through interviews, conducting focus group discussions, and selecting empirical conflict cases in Mailafo area, which registered 42.3% of the total cases, this study examines land conflicts and contestations. Close examination of the cases shed light that the peri-urban nature of the area and state’s weakness to implement the 1994 land proclamation, to distribute tiesa, and to prepare town master plan as the main causes. Moreover, beyond the need for economic/material motivation, the conflicts show that the society is a never-give-up litigant society and the state is weak. The recursive processes and/or dyadic relations brought various disputants and state institutions closer to everyday forms/practices of claims and counter-claims and everyday forms/practices of governance, which sheds more light on the nature of state–society relations in rural Eritrea.

Keywords

Eritrea Mailafo land conflict

Introduction

After a century-long colonial rule (1890–1991) and a long and bitter armed struggle (1961–1991), Eritrea achieved its de facto independence in 1991. The new Eritrean state comes with various policy reforms and strategies as part of its endeavors to resolve the multiple challenges it faced in building the nascent nation-state, one of them being the land question. The new government placed land issues on top of its development priorities and declared land as state-owned in its National Charter, a document that outlined the government’s vision for future Eritrea. Later, Land Proclamation No. 58/1994 was enacted (GoE, 1994), focusing on three types of land rights: tiesa (rural housing, which also has an identity implication), usufruct right (agricultural land to farmers), and lease land (for commercial agriculture and urban housing).

The 1994 land proclamation got much attention, comparatively, from scholars, and most of them focused on critiquing its contents, intention, objectives, and process of its making. For example, Joireman (1996) and Wilson (1999) focused on the “disregard of the pastoralist rights,” Mengisteab (1998) on the “market encroachment” against peasants around big towns and peasants in general, and others (Castellani, 2000; Huggins & Ochieng, 2005; Kibreab, 2009a; Tewolde, 2000) focused on the lack of checks and balances, the lack of participation of the population and civil society in the making of the proclamation, on potential technical and practical implementation challenges, and on the state’s intention of consolidating control over land. Joireman states that the disregard of the rights of pastoralists and the emphasis of the proclamation on large-scale investment are the two possible “minefields” for future political and environmental crises in Eritrea. The researcher claims that this potential danger also has religious, regional, economic, and political implications for the agriculturalist-pastoralist dichotomy in the country. Kibreab (2009a, p. 37) questions the main assumptions and the reasons that support the policy. He believes that the “state ownership policy comes in spite of the bleak track record of property rights regime, instead of building on the wealth of the historically transmitted, culturally embedded, and socially sanctioned tenurial regimes in the country.”

Eritrea is conflict-ridden, and existing conflict studies in the country have focused extensively on the armed struggle and the post-independence border conflicts. Besides these, within the state, communal land conflicts also persisted for a long time. One of the justifications for the enactment of the 1994 land proclamation was that “land disputes and frictions were increasing from time to time” (GoE, 1994, p. 1), and hence it was hoped that the proclamation would play a role in reducing conflicts. However, communal land conflicts are continuing unabated and with scant attention from academics and policymakers. These types of conflicts have a long history in Eritrea, as Favali and Pateman (2003, p. 131, italics added) mentioned in passing: “[t]he written record and oral history show that Eritrea has been plagued by disputes over land since time immemorial.” Despite this, however, they have not received adequate attention. So far, studies by Naty (2002), Gebreab (2004), and Favali and Pateman (2003) have focused on Eritrea’s land conflicts. The first study discussed potential conflicts in Eritrea’s western lowlands following the resettlement and reintegration of ex-fighters and refugees and helps us understand the political or ethnic dimensions and implications of land conflict. The second study examined a case of land conflict between two villages, but it did not show the various types of land conflicts within the Eritrean state. The third study considered various cases, but it is not detailed and relies only on a few documents for its analysis.

The brief review in the above shows that studies on communal land conflicts in Eritrea are scant, despite their longevity and being major problems for society and the state. Moreover, these micro-level land conflicts could shed new light on crucial policy-related problems and suggest theoretical insights in the study of state–society relations. The objective of this study is, therefore, to explore and examine those types of conflicts in the Mailafo area-administration, located in the Adiquala subregion. While the former is the most conflicted area-administration in the sub-region, the latter is the most conflicted sub-region in the country.¹ The study addresses the following research questions: What are the natures/types of the land conflicts; why is the case study area the most conflict-ridden; what factors have been driving the conflicts; and how are claims and conflicts presented, contested, defended, and finally addressed by the various actors involved? Beyond their material dimension, what do the cases tell us about state–society relations in Eritrea?

In this study, the concept of “land” refers to both its tangible (economic value) and intangible assets (identity/belongingness). The terms “conflict” and “dispute” are used interchangeably. The concept of property rights refers to both “rights to a thing” involving human–land relations and the “laws of things” or “social relationships” that hold among humans in relation to a resource (human–human relations regarding land). The study relied on primary data sources obtained from six key informant interviewees, focus group discussion (FGD) of seven members, administrative documents and the land proclamation, and by reviewing three conflict case documents spanning from the start of the conflicts to their resolution. For their safety, names of interviewees and FGD members are kept anonymous. Members of interviewees and FGDs were purposefully selected based on the author’s prior contact with the Mailafo administrator and residents. They included those who previously worked as administrator and secretary and those who worked as committee members on various land and other related issues in Mailafo, such as preparing/supervising the availability of land, identifying and registering qualified villagers for land distribution, and conducting the actual distribution of plots in conflict resolution, among other related village affairs. They were farmers and the most knowledgeable people on the land issues in the area. All data were collected in 2019 as part of the author’s field trip to the area for PhD thesis research. Data from all sources was analysed through content and discourse analysis. The three conflict case documents, written in Tigrigna (a local language), were collected from the conflict documents available in the sub-region and the regional offices and were translated into English by the author. The conflict cases contain several submissions by disputants and decisions by concerned authorities at different periods. The administration compiled the files in one document (from the beginning of the case to its final resolution date). Some of the files have page numbers, while others do not. Hence, it was difficult to cite them with page numbers. The whole files in the document were examined and interpreted, and the final date of the case resolution was used for reference. The secondary sources (books and journal articles) were used only for the literature review and the historical and background context of the study.

The rest of the article proceeds as follows. The “Introduction” section briefly introduces the focus of recent studies on land issues in developing countries and then briefly reviews the concept of state–society relations. The “Land Issues in Developing Countries and the Concept of State–society Relations” section provides Eritrea’s historical and contextual background before we delve into our case study. The “Eritrea’s Historical and Contextual Background” section provides the case study areas’ historical and background context before delving into the three selected cases. The “Introduction and Background Context to Mailafo” section scrutinizes the land conflict cases deposited in the sub-region, before selecting the Mailafo area-administration from where most of the conflict cases were reported. The “The Sub-region’s Land Conflicts at a Glance” section screens the conflict files in Mailafo and thoroughly examines, through interviews and FGDs, why this area has more conflict cases. The “Examination of Land Conflicts in Mailafo” section examines three selected cases for in-depth understanding of some of the conflicts in Mailafo.

Land Issues in Developing Countries and the Concept of State–society Relations

Land is a crucial and highly contested asset in developing countries. Most sub-Saharan African countries’ GDP and labor are highly dependent on land/agricultural activities (AU-ECA-AfDB, 2011). Moreover, land in such countries is a source of socio-cultural/identity attachments and politics (Borras, 2007). Because of these important dimensions of land, in the last few decades, especially with the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (and recently the Sustainable Development Goals) and the onset of the 2007/2008 world food, energy, and financial crises, the land sector has received more attention. International development agencies, governments, and academics have focused extensively on effective governance of land because it contributes to economic growth and development, reduces poverty and hunger, enhances food security and democratic governance, empowers women and minorities, curbs environmental changes, and resolves conflicts (USAID, 2013).

Land and land-based resources in such countries have also been the primary source of conflicts, fueling social and political instability. Various studies have focused on the determinants, actors, and impacts of large-scale land acquisition, also referred to as “land grabs” or “global land rush” (see Byerlee & Deninger, 2013; Cotula et al., 2009; Fairhead et al., 2012; Jensen & Sørensen, 2012; Kugelman & Levenstein, 2012; Scheidel & Sorman, 2012). Land-abundant Africa has also been the theater for land conflicts. As Wily (2009, p. 29) determined, “[s]ince 2000, 48 per cent of civil conflicts have been in Africa where access to rural land matters deeply to the survival of the majority.”

Because of the direct and indirect linkage of land conflicts and armed conflict, land issues in “conflict-affected settings” have also attracted the attention of academics, development agencies, and policy experts. On one hand, armed conflict leads to land conflicts through displacement, weakening land governance, and insecure property rights. On the other, land conflicts and other contributing factors also lead to protracted armed conflicts. Hence, scholars have emphasized the importance of land conflicts in “fragile” developing countries in the context of peacebuilding and statebuilding (see Badiey, 2013; Leckie, 2008; Mancino & Bose, 2021; Pantuliano, 2009; Perdomo, 2021; Takeuchi et al., 2014; Unruh, 2003, 2010, 2016; Unruh & Williams, 2013). Most studies on land issues in developing countries have focused on the above issues, which have broader global and regional impact, whereas micro-level inter- and intra-communal land conflicts that are beyond the above-stated factors and perspectives have received scant attention.

A brief review on state–society relations as theoretical/conceptual foundation is crucial to this study. At first, the state–society relations concept evolved from traditional sociological works exclusively focusing on society. Later, explanations focused on the state dominated, as in Skocpol’s (1985) “bringing the state back in.” Broadly, while some view state and society as dichotomous entities, others focus on the balanced, interactive, and interdependent dyadic relations or state-in-society concept between the two (Migdal, 2001).

Going beyond studies on the formal structures of the state from above, Tria Kerkvliet (2009, p. 227) offered the study of rural areas from below as an alternative, arguing that,

[p]olitics in peasant societies is mostly the everyday, quotidian sort. Hence, if one looks only for politics in conventional places and forms, much would be missed about villagers’ political thought and actions as well as relationships between political life in rural communities and the political systems in which they are located.

By focusing on low-profile and unorganized types of resistance, Scott (1985) explored power and resistance within society and between the state and society to argue that those types of resistance were “everyday forms of peasant resistance” and the “weapons of the weak.” Other studies have shown how cultural revolution (the cultural content of the activities of state institutions) and “popular culture” at grass-roots level enhance state formation, that is, how the state changes society’s culture by (re)shaping identities/loyalties and reconstructing social relations through material and ideational/symbolic means for social ordering, legitimacy, and consensus building on governance (see Corrigan & Sayer, 1985; Joseph & Nugent, 1994).

Other scholars on land issues subsequently adopted the concept of everyday forms of state formation/state–society relations to examine the processes of defining, enforcing, debating, settling, and contesting property rights to land, access to natural resources, and membership to a community, which the above processes by themselves establish, challenge/erode, and reproduce political authority (see Boone, 2003, 2007, 2014; Lund, 2008, 2016; Sikor & Lund 2009).

In sum, the concept of state–society has drawn increasing attention for analysing policymaking and implementation, explaining economic development outcomes, exploring power, reforms/change, and resistance. In this study, it refers to the various actors involved within the state and within society and the dyadic relations between the state and society that claim, conflict, defend, and recognize or reject rights to land.

Eritrea’s Historical and Contextual Background

Eritrea is characterized by weak land governance, poor livelihoods, and land conflicts, which are embedded in the broader historical and contemporary national context. Successive regimes that ruled Eritrea have been at war (1961–1991 and 1998–2000) and no-war-no-peace (2001–2018). Besides controlling land, historically, successive regimes have been capturing peasants’ labor to fight wars (Beyan, 2018). The state controlled land and labor—two crucial means of production. Those regimes also introduced land reforms, although they never fully implemented them on the ground because of wars, fear of opposition, and weak state capacity.

Besides the above factors, Eritrea’s diversity in mode of production, climate, environment and resource endowment, and agro-ecology contributed to the multiplicity and complexity of land tenure systems, which then challenged standardization of land policy at the national level, leading to governance problems—legal pluralism and normative orders/dissonance. The diesa (communal) tenure system, practiced for a long time, was ineffective and contributed to tenure insecurity (Nadel, 1946); the continuous distribution of land every 5–7 years led to land degradation, which in itself caused soil erosion and a decrease in fertility, production, and food insecurity.

Because of Eritrea’s locational proximity to the Sahel, it is susceptible to environmental changes. Both anthropogenic and natural factors contributed to environmental and socio-economic stress—land degradation, in particular. The state and peasants in Eritrea had no time to adopt mitigation and adaptation mechanisms because of the successive wars. Subsistence agriculture, the mainstay of the majority, depends on the annual rain, which is usually meager, and almost all farmers still use oxen to plough. Agriculture accounts for 26% of Eritrea’s gross domestic product, and 80% of the labor force depends on it (Ministry of Agriculture, MoA, 2002).² While population grew exponentially, per capita arable land decreased dramatically between 1900 and 2015 (MoA, 2002).

In terms of food security, Eritrea is food insecure. Only in 6 years (1998, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2014) was it able to produce and secure 100% of its food needs. For the rest of 21 years of independence, it was below the required level or insecure (MoA administrative data, 2019). The agricultural sector, which employs a dominant majority, is not well developed, is/was exposed to various natural and man-made catastrophes, and historically, successive regimes have not given adequate attention to it. Mengisteab (1990) states that, more than the rest of Ethiopia prior to independence, Eritrea’s agricultural sector was more affected by the damage of property, disruption of economic activity, the plundering of peasants, and the detachment of workforce from agriculture.

Kibreab (2009b) stated that the post-independence expectations were not met and concluded that the policies designed and enforced guaranteed unrestricted political, economic, social, and cultural control. World Bank reports also show that Eritrea’s general governance condition and the national economy have been deteriorating, which has further weakened the state’s responses to land governance and society’s livelihoods, mainly after the border war with Ethiopia. The conflicts examined here should not be seen in isolation. Instead, they are manifestations of, or are embedded within, the above historical and contextual background.

Introduction and Background Context to Mailafo

Mailafo area administration is found in the Adiquala sub-region, located at the southern end of Eritrea’s central highland, in Debub (south) region, which borders with Ethiopia, and is 90 km from the Eritrea’s capital, Asmara. Mailafo (circled in purple, Map 1) is situated adjacent to the Adiquala town, the subregion’s headquarters (represented by a Star). It is located at the elevated plateau section of the subregion and is one of the 22 administrations that constitute the sub-region. Topography, climate, and fertility/types of soil affect settlement patterns: more settlement clusters are observed in the northern plateau, which is shaded in black, and scattered settlements in the lowland sections. Mailafo is located in the section with more settlement clusters. It has a total population of 8,578 and 1,081 household units (Adiquala administration, 2019).

Map 1.

Source: Prepared by research assistant based on author’s request.

The dominant majority of the population adheres to Orthodox Christianity, and almost all are from Tigrigna speakers. Most of the people rely on traditional subsistence farming, with few engaged in service-related activities. The case study has a temperate climate and receives the highest rainfall in the country. It has fertile clay soils and grows different cereal crops. Teff, white and red, is dominant. White teff, which is consumed by a comparatively rich families living in urban areas, is quite expensive. This area is lucrative, and families defend each inch of their land, which is the context of the higher number of conflicts.

Historically, the area was a center for semi-feudal lords for all areas around Adiquala. The dominant competing endas (kindred) of local elites used to compete for land, tribute, power, and prestige. Few ruling families owned the land under the resti/tselmi (family/descent-based) tenure system, with a long history of inheritance succession. The majority of people were tenants. Let alone for migrants or aliens, it was difficult to get land even for local people who shared same/close blood and kinship ties with those in power. Local elites gave most of the land to gebar (tenant) of nonindigenous origin, a purposeful act of deterring competition for power by close relatives (Anonymous 1, 11 November 2019).

Moreover, while resti/tselmi system was weakened in the 1930s by the Italian colonial state in two other highland areas of Eritrea, such a system fully persisted in our case study area until the mid-1980s. In the mid-1970s, the Dergue regime introduced a diesa tenure system in other parts of Ethiopia, where land was distributed equally among farmers for the first time. In the areas where our case study is located, however, the Dergue conducted land distribution late in 1983/1984 because of fear of protest and the ongoing armed struggle. In terms of agricultural land, the previously advantaged group, family, and enda lost their privilege because all people got an equal share of land by the government. However, those who had close relations with the colonial powers could amass large housing compounds, which until today are in their possession and partly contribute to the current tiesa (land for housing/residential) conflicts in the area (Anonymous 1, 11 November 2019). After independence, disputes based on resti/tselmi claims (which include concessions, land of a eucalyptus tree, big land/compound, and land of beehives) still exist. Although the Dergue partially weakened the resti/tselmi mentality, it never eliminated it. There are still individual resti/tselmi-based claim complaints submitted to Mailafo. The following section highlights the types of conflicts at the sub-region level before delving specifically into the Mailafo case.

The Sub-region’s Land Conflicts at a Glance

Conflict cases/files reported from area/village administrations to the subregion’s Public Relations office were scrutinized. Data was available from 1998–2000 to 2009–2019. Conflict cases for the remaining years were not available. A total of 570 conflicts were reported in 14 years. The three major types of reported conflicts were: agricultural land-related (51.1%), tiesa-related (29.6%), and road access-related (8.4%). The remaining 4.6%, 4%, and 2.3% were regarding resources on land, fodder-related, and border issues, respectively. The first category includes request or claim for use rights, denial of use rights, farming in a prohibited area, sharecropping cases, exchange of land for a land previously expropriated by the government for social services, change of use rights, crop damage, taking extra land, and the borders of plots. The second category refers to request or claim of land for residence or housing, walls of buildings and houses, the territorial limits of compounds, illegal building of houses and encroachment beyond the size allotted, inheritance, change of tiesa, and claims for una (forefathers’ ruined residential area). The last category includes passage blocking, requests for new passage, passage through crop-growing and grass or pasture areas, flood drainage, and other related cases. From all the 22 of the sub-region’s administrations, the Mailafo reported more cases, which were then selected for further investigation.

Examination of Land Conflicts in Mailafo

Besides generating the above statistical data, the author conducted interviews and FGDs to further examine and support the data and to investigate why this area reported more cases. The reasons were as follows. First, beginning from the 1970s to 1980s, Dergue’s policy of mixing migrants from Ethiopia and from other parts of Eritrea with those indigenous villagers motivated the migrants to claim land based on the wedi arbe’a (literally means a son of 40, which is a customary practice that allows to claim land rights after 40 years of uninterrupted residence or previous use rights). Indigenous villagers, however, rejected such claimants because the latter failed to trace their descent. Both groups of contestants applied customary practices: while nonlocal people claim rights based on the customary practice and long-time residence, the local villagers defended their land by asking the former to prove their descent or lineage with the latter. This practice is still applied. The government supported the nonindigenous to get land based on long-time residence, customary practice, and more importantly, through the 1994 land proclamation, for having fulfilled their national obligations and securing citizenship based on the 1992 proclamation on nationality.

Second, some local people who belong to Mailafo migrated to other lowland areas (in pre-Italian and during the Italian period, 1890–1941) for grazing purposes and availability of vast tracts of fertile land. However, over time, the lowlands lost their importance, and the highlands, where Mailafo is located, were preferred instead. Hence, those who had migrated a long time ago started to claim land rights based on long-time lineage relations. Those who previously migrated but whose ancestral relations with the Mailafo were not disrupted continued to claim land rights to the latter.

Third, women from Mailafo who married lowland men would get fake divorces to claim land in their father’s village (Mailafo), and even their children would claim land rights after their mothers’ deaths. When the post-independence state declared land as state-owned in 1994, those who were born from lowland women and whose origin was from the Mailafo started to claim rights as deqi gual (sons of a daughter) and based on ancestral relations. Most of them requested tiesa land only (because of the peri-urban nature of Mailafo, land for housing was lucrative), while some claim agricultural land after securing tiesa. Relatives cooperate by tracing historical ties and witnessing for evidence.

Fourth, since 1989, there has not been a distribution of tiesa land in Mailafo. The problem is that although the majority of the residents, and especially the young, are demanding distribution, the old generation in general and those who had amassed large tracts of tiesa land in the previous distributions, in particular, are not willing to redistribute, even if their sons, who are in their 40s–50s are living in a rented house, just like the migrants. Those with large tracts of land prefer, instead, to plant eucalyptus trees and use them for beehives.

During the Dergue, village administrations/village land committees decided the size of tiesa land. After independence, however, the size of tiesa land became uniform/fixed by the central government. Although other villages distributed tiesa, there has never been tiesa distribution in Mailafo since 1989, due to the disagreement among villagers and also the fact that Mailafo is a peri-urban area, hence the government requiring a finalized town master plan before undertaking distribution. There is a conflict of interest between the old and the young generations, and the government (sub-region, region, and national government) remains neutral or indecisive. It is puzzling/paradoxical that, while the youth are defending the country’s territory since the 1998 border war with Ethiopia, the government has not guaranteed them tiesa land rights for residence in their village. The government’s failure to intervene has created unease among the young.

In 2019, land was surveyed for distribution and preparation finalized, but there was no progress. The administration delayed the implementation for reasons unknown to inhabitants. An interlocutor explained the problem as follows:

[w]e have a huge problem! The government didn’t guarantee our rights, and at the same time, for the last two decades, the same government has been forcing us to fulfil our national obligation of defending the country. It is also taking our land for urban settlement, which most beneficiaries are affluent town dwellers who came from the surrounding villages at various times. Even now, the government has reserved some land for urban residents. But no one dares to speak. At the end they tell you that land is under government ownership. Those who got urban land also have rural houses in their respective villages. Thus, they have two advantages while we have barely one. (Anonymous 2, 11 November 2019)

When asked for a remedy, a respondent recommended the following. First, the government needs to take back the extra land from the rich for readjustment and redistribution. Second, as there has not been tiesa distribution since 1989, many people without tiesa have been waiting for distribution for so long. Hence, the government needs to prepare additional land to accommodate everybody. Third, the government needs to prioritize the local population before reserving and providing land to urban dwellers (Anonymous 3, 11 November 2019).

The author also conducted FGD to explore from multiple viewpoints. After praising Dergue’s fair land distribution compared to the post-independence, an interlocutor claimed that the inclusion of government employees and people working in the service sector in the distribution of agricultural land, as well as cases of fake divorce, created pressure on the already scarce farmland (Anonymous 4, 22 November, 2019). After reiterating the above comments, another interlocutor added that the pressure from higher authorities and the latter’s rejection to villages’ decisions (regarding those who failed to trace descent with villages) was a major problem (Anonymous 5, November 22, 2019).

Another interlocutor, who previously worked in the administration of the area and who knows the problem in depth, expressed his observations as follows:

[a]lthough the land proclamation is clear, village land committee, village affairs committee, and area-administrations are not following it strictly. There is mismatch between the written law and in practice. Many fake divorce cases flooded us. Without being critical, courts accept and approve fake divorces. The government has to give credit and voice to villages’ decision, which thoroughly know the cases. Government has to take action against those requesting land through a fake divorce. Another is delay of tiesa distribution; since 1989, no tiesa has been distributed while other villages allot tiesa regularly. As ours is a peri-urban area, the government told us it would distribute when land-use planning/ a master plan is ready. The young generation are living in house rent which is expensive and are negatively affected. There is conflict of interest between the young and the old generation. While the former request urgent distribution and the old one who already own tiesa land wants to delay the process. The problem emanates primarily from the government’s indecisiveness to intervene and give permission for redistribution. (Anonymous 6, 22 November 2019)

An interlocutor who is in her 40s and is also a victim of the problem stated that there is already a feud within families, and she expressed her sympathy with the young and blamed the old for not taking seriously the critical issue for most of the youth. Finally, she argued, “[a]t this time, most of the youth have migrated and it is easy to distribute tiesa land now, as the claimants’ number has decreased” (Anonymous 7, 22 November 2019). In line with Saba’s observation, several sources indicate that Eritrea has been one of the top contributors of migrants in the world (EASO, 2016; Kibreab, 2013).

Another interlocutor, however, believes that those with large tiesa/compounds are the problem, as they opposed redistribution. He claims that when Luel was the sub-region’s administrator at the beginning of the 2000s, she told villagers to distribute land to their inhabitants before the Adiquala town administration incorporated large tracts of land into the town master plan for distribution to inhabitants living in the town. However, the villagers failed to do so because of conflicting interests. The respondent said, “[i]magine! Some of the claimants have now become grandfathers since they started asking for tiesa land, they have no tiesa and hence no identity, and they still are in indefinite national service.” He argued that even though the young generation attempted to approach higher authorities, they were blocked by the rich and powerful. “The rich people do not allow land redistribution even to their children, let alone land distribution at the village level” (Anonymous 8, 22 November 2019).

He mentioned that in September 2019, the master plan of the peri-urban area was ready. However, as the borders of large compounds were rearranged, the owners appealed to the Debub region, and the distribution failed. He attributed the failure to the government’s inaction. Another problem is the continuous reshuffling of the sub-region’s administrators. Whoever is appointed administrator intends to study the case thoroughly, but doing so takes time, and because of the sensitivity of the case, no one dares to take decisive action. Overall, the problem is made worse by the lack of direct intervention from above. Moreover, he mentioned that the village land committees identified and reported more than 50 fake divorce cases, but no one from the government side took it seriously (Anonymous 8, 22 November 2019).

Another interlocutor disagreed with those who claimed that owners of large tiesa land were the problem. For him, the problem emanates from the government side; as he stated,

[t]he government is not taking seriously the young people’s plea for tiesa rights. The young have been in the barracks defending the country for the last 20 years. The government has to intervene and distribute tiesa by force, if necessary. Our problem is the government and not the local rich people with a vested interest. (Anonymous 9, 22 November 2019)

According to another interlocutor, however, no one opposed the distribution. Instead, the problem emanates from the peri-urban nature of the Mailafo, and hence, villagers were not permitted to distribute tiesa by themselves as other villages do. It was because the government has to prepare the master plan first. He also mentioned that villagers requested the regional administrator for distribution in one of their meetings. The administrator replied that the government has no [conducive] time to prepare a master plan because of Eritrea’s border conflict with Ethiopia, which forced the government to focus on other big national security issues. Hence, the administrator recommended and permitted the villagers to prepare and fund the master plan themselves. They started it, but they stopped in between for reasons that villagers do not know. Finally, he concluded, “I can say that the government has not paid attention to our challenges since independence” (Anonymous 10, 22 November 2019).

For another interlocutor, however, the problem was the lack of alternative urban/peri-urban areas in the sub-region, which could have eased/shared the pressure on Adiquala town, whose expansion is encroaching on Mailafo’s lands. He stated as follows:

[t]he problem is that Adiquala is the only town in the sub-region. Had there been another town, the burden would be shared. Government employees, urban job seekers, people of better livelihoods, and diasporas’ relatives/ families are flocking to Adiquala, creating pressure on house rent prices and fear among the locals that the government may in the future allocate land to urban dwellers. In contrast, since 1989, the locals have not received tiesa land. (Anonymous 11, 22 November 2019)

In sum, we observed that Mailafo registered many conflict cases, and the conflicts were examined in detail in the above by scrutinizing reported conflict documents/cases, and by conducting interviews and FGDs. Table 1 summarizes the causes for the conflicts across time for a quick review of the issues already discussed.

Table 1.

Summary of reasons for the increase in land conflicts in Mailafo.

S.No	Long-term and immediate causes
1	The customary practice of wedi/deqi Arbe’a enticed local Eritreans and those with an Ethiopian origin to claim land.
2	Returnees from lowlands/other areas claim land based on descent, previous use right, and residence.
3	Increasing fake divorce and/or marriage, deqi guals land claim cases.
4	Delay in tiesa distribution (no distribution since 1989).
5	Requirement of a government master plan and land-use classification, as it is a peri-urban area and cannot distribute like other nearby villages.
6	Conflicting interest within families/among villagers (young vs. old generation)
7	Conflict/disagreement on priority between villagers and the government.
8	Divorced women and off-farm jobs seekers rent a house in peri-urban, and as time passes, they and their children claim land based on long-time residence.
9	Sub-region’s administrators continuous reshuffling without deciding on tiesa.
10	Government’s pressure on decisions by villages and area administrations and the latter’s rejection of the former.
11	Increasing land value and urbanization, delay in tiesa distribution and stopping of house construction, no other urban areas in the sub-region as an alternative to reduce the pressure on Adiquala town and the Mailafo.
12	Inconsistency between laws/policy and practice; legal and normative pluralism

Source: Author’s summary from interviews, FGD, Mailafo administration, November 2019.

The causes summarized above emanated from society (causes No. 1, 2, 3, 6, 8), from the state (5, 9, 10, 11), and from both (4, 7, 12). However, if we examine deeply, the causes that come from society are because the government failed to fully implement the 1994 proclamation, distribute tiesa, and prepare the town master plan. Hence, state weakness was the main factor. In the following section, three selected cases of land conflict in the case study area are examined.

Examination of Selected Cases in Mailafo

Case 1: Conflict Based on Identity and a Quest for a Fair Distribution

This conflict case is about identity and a quest for fair distribution of land.³ It is between the representatives of the villages and the administrations of the Mailafo area the sub-region, reported by the former to the latter two administrations in 1999. The village representatives complained about agricultural land rights of three categories of people: residents of Ethiopian origin, teachers, and business people. As the first post-independence agricultural land distribution approached (in 1999), village representatives complained about the land rights of the above three groups of people as follows.

First, during the 1984 Dergue’s land distribution, Ethiopians who had come to the area for various reasons were allotted land without the villagers’ consent. Village representatives argued that, during the 1999 distribution, the post-independence administration included the Ethiopian migrants in the distribution simply because they possessed Eritrean identity cards and also had been allotted land in 1984, which they had farmed continuously since then. Village representatives listed 16 families of such cases and argued the Dergue had achieved the 1984 distribution by coercing the local villagers, and hence, villagers pressed the government to reject the migrants’ rights at the 1999 distribution.

The second complaint was about teachers who, by origin, belonged to the locals. As stated in the villagers’ letter, “[i]t is unfair to give full gbri (rights/share) to our sons and brothers who are working as teachers. Their salary for one month is equivalent to one year’s of our crop production.” Here, the villagers did not deny the teachers’ rights but instead suggested that, as members of the community serving them, they should get half gbri.

As for the third complaint, the villagers argued that business people who already owned licenses for service-related activities had a better livelihood than them. Hence, business people should be denied land. As stated in the villagers’ own words, “[w]e have small plots of land; the government should not treat us equally.”

The Mailafo administration decided against the village committee in all three cases. Then, the village committee appealed to the sub-regional administration, which again gave favor to the migrants, teachers, and business people.

From the above cases, we draw the following observations. First, while the state recognized those of Ethiopian origin as Eritrean citizens, provided them Eritrean national ID cards and land rights based on the customary practice of deki arbe’a, the local people rejected them as members of their village and wanted the Ethiopians’ land rights denied. While the state acted based on Art. 4 (1, 2, 4) of its 1994 land proclamation, which declared, “[e]very/any Eritrean is entitled to use rights without discrimination” (GoE, 1994, emphasis added), villagers’ argued on the basis of customary practice of proving descent. Second, the case raises the issue of what is fair distribution, as villagers argue that business people have a better livelihood than them and teachers are salaried.

On one hand, the villagers feared that giving all inhabitants equal lots of land would diminish land sizes, and on the other, they refused land rights based on Art. 6(2) of the proclamation, which stated, “[u]sufruct rights to land for farming activities in village areas of Eritrea shall be granted only to those Eritrean citizens who are permanent residents of Eritrean villages and whose livelihood depends on land” (GoE, 1994, emphasis added). Accordingly, those considered foreigners and nonfarmer Eritreans were denied rights.

In this case, the state redistributed peasant land by allotting land rights to its employees (teachers) because it paid an insufficient salary. While sharing land helped the state to compensate for the meager salary it pays, allowing land rights to Ethiopians served the purpose of mutual recognition between the Ethiopian migrants and the new Eritrean state. These measures, however, created pressure on land size, thereby imposing a burden on peasants. Interestingly, both the villagers and the state cited the articles of the land proclamation to support their respective cases. It indirectly shows the recognition by the dissatisfied villagers of the proclamation as a tool for supporting their claims and defending their rights vis-à-vis others, and the state’s imposition or enforcement of its laws. Although we cannot say the new land proclamation is the main factor for the above conflict case, the latter is surely a manifestation of, or a response to, both the post-independence land proclamation it enacted and the land distribution process it followed.

Case 2: Tracing Belongingness to Secure Peri-urban Land Rights

This dispute is about tiesa land between Habtemariam Abraham and the land committee of Adi Hihi village (the latter is one of the villages that constitute the Mailafo area-administration).⁴ Adi Hihi, his ancestral village, is located near Adiquala town, the sub-region headquarters. Although Habtemariam’s father and grandfather own tiesa in another village named Debrebirhan (in Adelges area-administration, where they currently live), it is far from the town, and Habtemariam argued that he shares no origin/ties with Debrebirhan but instead with Adi Hihi. He also brought evidence that his uncle from the same village, Debrebirhan, had previously been awarded land in Adi Hihi by the village land committee. Moreover, Habtemariam indicated that even his uncle’s sons, who had grown up with him in Debrebirhan, were accepted and allotted land in Adi Hihi in 2017, although their parents, like his parents, possessed tiesa in Debrebirhan.

Furthermore, he brought another piece of evidence. His father and his uncles had already acquired una in Adi Hihi, where their grandparents had lived with their shares. Some of them renovated it, and others were in the process of renovating. To further consolidate his claim, Habtemariam brought evidence that another uncle, who had died in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital city, was buried in Adi Hihi, not in Debrebirhan. He claimed that Adi Hihi did not oppose his uncle’s burial in their village simply because the latter’s father lived not in Adi Hihi but in Debrebirhan. Here, accepting burial means accepting the deceased’s belonging to the village, and if the village accepts his identity, the claimant is also entitled to tiesa property right. Because, by implication, both the dead uncle and the claimant have equal belonging to the village. Based on the above processes of collecting and tracing evidence, he requested tiesa in what he called “my village of historical origin.” The attempt for possession/ownership of tiesa and the social relationship aspects that emanate from it are the two property right dimensions of this case.

Although the village’s land committee agreed that Habtemariam belonged to their kindred, they stated that his grandparents and parents had migrated to Debrebirhan during the Haileselasie period (1930–1974), lived, and owned tiesa and agricultural land rights there. The committee also indicated that the claimant grew up in and completed national service through Debrebirhan⁵; hence, he had to ask for tiesa there and not in Adi Hihi. Growing up in and enrolling in the national service through Debrebirhan means that the claimant has accepted Debrebirhan as his village. One land committee member mentioned, “[i]t has been 70 years for your grandfather and around 50 years for your father since they left Adi Hihi, and hence you have to ask rights there.” The Mailafo area administration then rejected Habtemariam’s claim.

After this, Habtemariam appealed to the sub-region, and the latter rejected his claim for the following reasons: his grandfather owns tiesa and agricultural land in Debrebirhan; his father was born in and grew up in Debrebirhan and has tiesa and agricultural land there; Habtemariam was born and grew up in and completed national service through the Debrebirhan administration; and he also acknowledged that his grandfather and father own tiesa and agricultural land in Debrebirhan. Therefore, the sub-region decided that he should get rights in Debrebirhan and not in Adi Hihi. Habtemariam, however, appealed to the region. After collecting written and oral evidence, the latter affirmed the sub-region’s previous decision—Habtemariam, to get land in Debrebirhan.

From this case, we draw the following conclusions. First, Habtemariam made all efforts to obtain evidence to get tiesa: tracing historical ties by showing his ancestors una, the rights acquired by his uncle and the uncle’s sons, and the death and the village’s acceptance for burial of another uncle of Habtemariam. According to the claimant, the latter implies that the village recognized his dead uncle as a member of their village, and hence, he argued, it automatically applies to him (Habtemariam) as well. However, villagers replied based on evidence that Habtemariam’s parents had left 50–70 years ago. Hence, they are already well established in another village.

Second, Habtemariam claimed land rights in Adi Hihi because it is nearer to a town and he wanted to benefit from owning, selling, and renting houses in urban area. As government employee, he does not have enough salary to sustain his family, and also house rent has been increasing (see Case 3). The government’s inability to pay enough salary and also its failure to distribute land for urban and peri-urban residence in the last 20 years (and since 1989 in the Mailafo administration) have led to an increase in house rent, in land value, and in illegal sales. The Eritrean government justifies the delay was because of the war and the no-war-no-peace situation with Ethiopia (until 2018), which made tiesa distribution difficult. Besides, as the location where the claimant asked tiesa is peri-urban, the government wanted to distribute land after preparing town master plan.

Moreover, disagreement between the government and villages and also among villagers was a reason for the delay of tiesa distribution—youngsters with no tiesa vis-à-vis the wealthy elderly who had amassed large tiesa during the Dergue period. The latter opposed distribution because doing so would mean taking back the excess land and redistributing it to the young, which is against their interests. Although both the elderly and the youngsters possess farming land, the latter have not received tiesa land for the last three decades, leading in to a class of “haves and have-nots” manifesting some aspects of class struggle within the peasantry. Generally, although class-based division/class struggle in a strict sense does not exist within Eritrean peasantry (except some aspect of it, such as economic differentiation due to the lack, or possession, of labor, farm implements, and oxen), property right conflicts regarding tiesa (housing land with its vast compounds) between the elderly and youngsters, which come because of the delayed tiesa distribution, resulted in or manifested some aspects of class struggle within the peasantry.

Case 3: Tracing Identity to Benefit from the land’s Rising Value

Initially, this case started as an identity claim.⁶ The claimants’ real interest, however, was economic—seeking advantage from the increasing peri-urban land prices. The case involved three brothers who come from the Adi Sebea village (in Daerokune’at area-administration) and the Mailafo area-administration’s land committee. They traced their ancestry to geza (house/lineage) Dege, which constitutes the four gezawti/ lineages in the Mailafo. The brothers argued that their descendants lived there (where also their father was born) and claimed that their grandfather had resti and tiesa land. However, after divorce, their father moved with his mother to Adi Sebea, grew up, and owned tiesa and agricultural land there. The brothers (his children) asked to return to what they claimed was their original village and reunite with relatives. They brought a letter of leave from Adi Sebea, but the Mailafo administration rejected them stating, first, if the brothers were provided land, others would follow. Second, Mailafo had a scarcity of land.

The brothers were born, grew, and educated in Adi Sebea, where their father is living. They stated that they could bring witnesses and argued the Mailafo administration had allotted land to other individuals with similar cases as theirs. The brothers indicated they first acquired their grandparents’ una (a ruined residential area) in 1992, renovated the residence, and had lived there since 2003. Later, they requested agricultural land to the Mailafo administration, but the latter rejected, and the brothers later switched their request from agricultural to tiesa land, and again the administration rejected them. To further consolidate their claims, the brothers referred to the 1994 land proclamation (GoE, 1994), as follows:

[e]very Eritrean citizen shall have the right to obtain tiesa land in his home village (Art.6 (3)). An Eritrean citizen who desires to obtain usufruct right over tiesa land and/or land for farming activities may apply to the Land Administrative Body in his intended place of residence.⁷ (Art.14 (4), emphasis added)

In response to the brothers’ claim of origin, historical ties to a certain endas in Mailafo, and their reference to the 1994 land proclamation, the administration replied that “[u]se right is restricted to where one’s father and/or mother or oneself are/is living, and hence the claimants’ father has tiesa and agricultural land in Adi Sebea from a young age, and they have to ask there.” The area administration rejected the brothers’ claim. The latter then appealed to the sub-region and later to the region. Both administrations decided against claimants and the latter appealed to the Ministry of Local Government (MLG), and they lost the case again (Anonymous 12, 26 January 2021).

This conflict case showed the following: divorce led to change of residence and loss of historical connection with ancestors; hence, the brothers traced their identity connections to obtain land because they wanted to benefit from the increasing land value in urban/peri-urban areas where Mailafo is located. Moreover, Mailafo is located adjacent to the sub-region’s administrative center with comparatively better (and proximity to) social services, with potential for urbanization, off-farm jobs, an increase in land value, and with fertile farmland. In the last 20 years, prices for peri-urban/urban land, house, and rent in Eritrea have skyrocketed. For instance, according to members of FGD, in the 1990s, a 4x4-meter room could be rented for 100–150 Nakfa (Eritrean currency). Until the government restricted price increase in 2016, the rent for a same-size room had increased to 800–1,000 Nakfa (FGD, Mailafo farmers, 22 November 2019).

Moreover, although it is illegal to sell land, some people managed to sell it after erecting some bricks, building one room, and even a vacant land. For example, in the 1990s, a piece of 20x20-meter vacant tiesa land was sold for 10,000–50,000 Nakfa. The price skyrocketed to 500,000–1,000,000 Nakfa, until 2015, when the government took the harsh measure of demolishing houses that were built through illegal purchase of land (FGD, Mailafo farmers, 22 November 2019). In a local television interview, the minister of the Ministry of Land, Water, and Environment stated that around 2,000 such houses were demolished throughout Eritrea (Tesfay Gebreslasie, 10 May 2018).

This case showed that, in the name of a search for identity connection, the three brothers wanted to benefit economically. While Mailafo remained defensive against nonresidents’ infiltration by requesting them to prove it by tracing descent, the state had invalidated this traditional practice in its 1994 proclamation.

Conclusion

This study has systematically explored and examined low-profile communal conflicts and contestations regarding access and use rights to land, and it found that from all the conflict cases registered in Adiquala sub-region, those from Mailafo area administration constituted about 42.3%, and tiesa and agricultural land-related conflicts were the two dominant cases. Close examination of the Mailafo sheds light that its peri-urban nature, and state’s weaknesses to implement the 1994 land proclamation, distribute tiesa, and prepare town master plan, were the main causes for the conflicts. The conflict cases revealed two broad categories of actors (societal and state actors) and three dimensions of their interactions: within society, within state, and dyadic state–society relations. While the former type of interaction involved local villages (through their representatives, land committees, and a village affairs committee) vis-à-vis various claimants (such as urban dwellers, deqi gual, deqi arbe’a, returnees, women with fake divorce/marriage cases, teachers, business people, and other individuals), the actors in the second and the third types involved various state institutions (village/area administrations, courts, sub-regional and regional administrations, and ministry of local government), and showed interactions both within state institutions and with the various societal actors/claimants aiming at resolving the conflict cases.

Actors in the conflict employ various means and processes to present, contest, and defend claims and counter-claims and to address the conflicts, which among them include: referring to customary practices and land proclamation, tracing descent, conducting fake marriage or divorce, demanding/rejecting tiesa distribution, switching requests between agricultural and tiesa land rights, appealing cases, summoning disputants, collecting/tracing evidence to strengthen claims and counter-claims, rejecting or accepting claims and counter-claims, and rejecting or affirming previous decisions. Such recursive processes and dyadic relations brought the various disputants and state institutions closer in to everyday forms/practices of claims and counter-claims, and everyday forms/practices of governance. Hence, beyond their material dimensions (that is, rights of access, use, and possession), those cases of conflict and contestation shed more light on the nature of state–society relations, society, and the state—while the society is a never-give-up litigant society, the state is weak, and most of the causes of the conflicts emanate from its weakness.

While the delayed tiesa distribution has led to some form of class struggle within the Mailafo’s peasantry, the failure to implement fully the land proclamation and the absence of peri-urban land laws has led to manipulation by the various disputants and state institutions and to the switching of claims based on state laws and customary practices. Although it is argued that conflicts could contribute positively in transforming peasants, this has not materialized in our case study. Because, first, the conflicts are low-profile and never threaten the power of political elites, which could have forced them to transform peasants’ livelihoods. Second, for the last two decades, the state itself was engaged in border conflicts, and hence it did not pay much attention to the transformation of peasant livelihoods. The findings of this study suggest that the state needs to improve its institutional capacity, fully implement the 1994 land proclamation, prepare the town master plan and distribute tiesa, establish another town to reduce the burden on Mailafo, promulgate peri-urban land law, avoid the parallel use of customary practices and the 1994 land proclamation (because by doing so it is creating dual institutions or practices), and take measures against those abusing their rights through fake divorce and/or marriage (because such practices are encouraging others to claim land rights through the same process). For the last two decades, the Eritrean state has not distributed tiesa land for urban dwellers and this has led to speculation and increasing demand for urban land. There is no land law on how to handle peri-urban areas and urbanization is inevitable in the future with potential encroachment to rural and peri-urban lands. Such land issues could be the main causes for conflicts, and hence preparations and further study are needed on such land issues.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, and the various institutions, research participants, and other individuals who helped during data collection. I also want to thank Professors Yusuke Takagi, Khoo Boo Teik, and Shinichi Takeuchi for their constructive comments and suggestions during various phases of the author’s PhD research, which this article was part of. This article has been improved for submission to this journal.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was conducted as part of my PhD Dissertation. The author received funding from the GRIPS G-cube research fund, Japan, for data collection (no grant no. indicated).

Informed Consent

All interviews conducted have obtained the agreement of the interviewers, and their names have been concealed.

Notes

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