Death in the Anthropology Department
In pursuit of Afar nomads
Just over 45 years ago Glynn Flood, my friend and co-PhD student in the LSE Anthropology department, was bayoneted to death by agents of the then Ethiopian government, along with hundreds of the ‘Afar nomads he had been studying in the Danakil desert.
It took a while for Michèle (Glynn’s widow) and Glynn’s father, going back out to Ethiopia together and then to Djibouti where some of his ‘Afar friends had fled, to piece together how, where and why Glynn had died.
In fact the seeds of disaster had been only too presciently spelled-out in an article he had written for RAI News (now Anthropology Today), earlier in 1975: “Nomadism and its future: the ‘Afar”.
The ‘Afar pastured their animals on the floor of the wide shallow Awash river valley, the river running down from the Ethiopian Highlands, through their territory, and petering out in salt lakes on the Djibouti borders. As has always been true for pastoralists all over the Sahel and in the drier parts of Ethiopia and East Africa, herds range far and wide right after the rains, just as wild animals do. But at the end of the dry season when there are intense water and grazing shortages, herders take their animals back to dry season camps near permanent water. And in the case of the ‘Afar this was on the banks of the river Awash. They can only make use of the remoter rain fed areas, which provide grazing for millions of valuable animals during the wet season, if the fall-back camps exist for them from February to June in the very driest months.
However, from the 1960s onwards the World Bank and other donors began to encourage the Ethiopian government in the Highlands to grow irrigated cotton on the flat fertile floodplains on either side of the river Awash, right where these essential dry season camps existed. No effort was made to understand ‘Afar needs or the logic of their annual movements. Tensions grew during a major famine in Ethiopia in 1973, and conflict between highlander cotton farmers and ‘Afar pastoralists continued to intensify over the next year or two. Eventually, in one of many skirmishes, Glynn and many of his friends and contacts were killed by a detachment of the Ethiopian army.
For us in the Anthropology department, students and staff alike, the shock of his death transfixed us. We PhD students had lost a good friend, one of the brightest of our cohort, under truly terrible circumstances. For the academic staff, it was the first time a PhD student had been sent into the field and been killed there. It called into question a great deal about the duty of care that supervisors should have for their students, about how closely staff should follow the politics of the countries where their students were working, and about whether – when – Glynn should have been told to come home.
Michèle lovingly looked after his papers for many years, but the notes were half in ‘Afar and half in English and she was unable to do anything with them alone. Miraculously two Ethiopian scholars (Jean Lydall and Maknun Ashami) were recently able to obtain funding (from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany through its Director Prof. Günther Schlee) to take his work forward. With the help of Michèle, his field notes and letters home were finally published as a monograph, ‘In pursuit of ‘Afar nomads’. A true labour of love.
The book was launched in London at the Royal Anthropological Institute in the summer of 2019, along with an exhibition of his superb photographs. Many of us who had known him were present or took part, sharing in the deep satisfaction, alongside the sadness, of the final completion and rounding off of an unfinished story.
Words by Gill Shepherd