Based on a true story [Thalia]

Well, in case anyone's still interested in the conflict in Darfur (it's sort of gone out of style)-- here's the first draft of the article I'm writing for CORE-Africa about it. This is the first draft, so... there might be a few inaccuracies, misspellings, etc. If you see something, say something (as the back of my Metrocard would tell you). "Si Ves Algo, Di Algo!" for the Spanish speakers.

Anyhow.





In recent years, one need only mention the words "Sudan" or "Darfur" to conjure up a crush of terrifying media images: roving, machete-wielding horsemen, scything hapless villagers down without mercy; aerial bombing of thatch-roofed African settlements; starving women and children telling, in fearful tones, of crimes intolerable in their brutality. Organizations as diverse as UNICEF and Bono's star-studded "One Campaign" have rallied around the huddled refugee masses, calling for conferences, canvassing aid funds, and arranging highly public anti-genocide demonstrations.

However, when asked to elaborate upon the political, social and economic root causes for the conflict, the average activist falls distressingly silent—perhaps after some stammering indictment of “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing.” This article intends to address the poverty of information about the conflict's background, and the reasons for its perpetuation.

I. The Basics: What is Darfur, and what is the nature of its conflict?

Darfur is a province of Sudan, situated at the extreme west of the country. It covers an area of 493,180 square kilometers—larger than Iraq and slightly smaller than France. It is home to some 36 main tribes, with at least 90 sub-clans; there are nomads and agriculturalists, ethnic Africans and ethnic Arabs, camel-herders and cattle-herders. Over twelve languages are spoken in its various sub-provinces.

The name "Darfur" comes from the African word "Dar," or "tribal land," and "Fur," one of the prominent African tribes of the region. Darfur's major African tribes include the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa; these tribes are largely settled agriculturalists. Arab tribes are mostly peripatetic, subsisting off animal husbandry, and include the Rizzeyqat, Habbaniya, and Ta'aisha.

The modern conflict in Darfur, roughly described, is a clash between two Darfuri rebel organizations and the central Government of Sudan that began early in 2003. The rebel organizations, the SLA (Sudanese Liberation Army) and the JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) are mainly composed of Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribesmen. The SLA is a secularist organization, allegedly backed by Eritrea; its stated goal is the creation of a “united, democratic Sudan.” The JEM, on the other hand, is an Islamist organization; it has been linked to both Chadian backers and an ousted faction of the Government of Sudan led by Hassan al-Turabi.

Though the rebellion initially experienced military success, it has since fared badly against the government. Government repression techniques include the hiring of equestrian militias—the infamous Janjaweed—as counterinsurgents. The janjaweed, culled mainly from nomadic Arab tribes and petty criminals, has persistently targeted civilians, utilizing scorched-earth tactics as well as rape, abduction and murder. Thousands of Darfuri African civilians have been driven from their traditional farmlands, taking refuge in camps across the Chadian border or in other sectors of Darfur. In many cases, the abandoned land has been rendered uninhabitable by government forces. Meanwhile, refugee camps continue to be hounded by Janjaweed forces, international aid has been persistently blocked by the Khartoum government, and the rebellion rages on.

Despite the media's saturation with Darfur's ethnic strife—or “genocide,” to use the hotly contested term—the idea that the conflict is a natural expression of ethnic tensions must be stubbornly resisted. The conflict must instead be viewed through the lens of the region's history. This article will reveal that the region's sore abuses at the hands of external agents, from colonial neglect to modern manipulation, are at the root of the current conflict.


II. Darfur's History

Darfur was an independent sultanate until, in 1916, it was conquered by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium government of Sudan. The colonial government practiced a policy it termed 'Indirect Rule'; others, less prone to nicety, might have called it "blatant neglect." From 1899 to 1939, the Sudan Political Service's 315 men administered to an area of nearly one million square miles. What resources it had were allocated almost entirely to the Khartoum Nile Valley region. Modernization was allowed to bypass Darfur entirely; native schooling was spare to nonexistent. As late as the 1950s, Darfur had no government agriculturalist, nor did it have a single maternity clinic. "Indirect Rule" dictated that the province was left to its own devices beneath tribal administrations—governors that maneuvered themselves to power under the mantle of "traditionalism," and were often corrupt, exercising little to no administrative control over their jurisdictions.

After Sudan's 1956 independence, Darfur was relied upon by the central "Umma" party as a solid voting bloc and otherwise summarily ignored. Though Darfuri devotees to the Mahdist political ideology—devotion to the descendants of the Mahdi, an imam who had briefly overthrown the Condominium government before being overwhelmed—contributed much to the neo-Mahdist Umma party's rise to power, their contributions were persistently unrewarded. Over the course of the 1950s and '60s, Sudan cycled rapidly through a series of civilian and military governments. The people of Darfur, however, saw little change from past policies of salutary neglect; Nile Valley Arabs, calling themselves the awlad al-beled (children of the river), dominated the Khartoum government. The Darfuri Arabs, by contrast, were labeled awlad al-Gharb (children of the West), and were looked down upon as "mutts," of diluted lineage. African tribes were scorned in equal measure by the awlad al-beled.

During the 1960s, the Umma party divided into two factions: Sadiq al-Mahdi, the party's leader, and his uncle, Imam al-Hadi, struggled for control of the party. Due to its long standing as an Umma stronghold, Darfur was host to the party's most vicious pre-election infighting; the candidates, desperately seeking out votes, decided to capitalize on Darfur's ethnic diversity. Sadiq al-Mahdi partnered with the governor of Darfur, Ahmed Ibrahim Diraige, and courted the "African" constituency, while Imam al-Hadi attempted to lure the "Arab" tribesmen to his faction. Though the toppling of the Umma's regime by the army rendered all its factionalism moot, its political exploitation of Darfur's racial dichotomy was to have a long, harsh legacy.

The 1970s ushered in one of the darkest eras in Darfur's history: a time when Darfur found itself the hapless pawn of no less than three separate external political agendas. Over the course of the '70s and '80s, Chad, Libya, and Khartoum vied for the province's resources, causing unprecedented turmoil and introducing racial tensions that continue to reverberate throughout the region.

The Chadian civil war began in 1965 as a rebellion against the post-colonial regime of Francois Tombalbaye. Sadiq al-Mahdi, then-leader of Sudan, welcomed the rebel group FROLINAT ( Front de Liberation Nationale du Tchad), allowing it to base its operations on the Sudan-Chad border—to wit, in Darfur. Over the course of the Chadian war, the brutal FROLINAT forces would be expelled and readmitted several times by successive Sudanese governments.

Meanwhile, Mu'ammar al-Qadhāfī, Libya's dictator, was deep in the throes of a geopolitical obsession. He hoped to forge a “pan-Arabist” empire in the Middle East, and as such set about to influence the affairs of every country within his reach—much to the detriment of neighboring Chad. A militant Arab supremacist, Qadhāfī supported the rebellion against the Sara tribesman Francois Tombalbaye's regime. Angered by the Sudanese president Jaafar Nimeiry, who adopted a conciliatory attitude towards Tombalbaye and his successor, Qadhāfī created the Falaika al-Islamiya (Islamic Legion), in order to facilitate the region's Arabization. Within Darfur proper, he supported the creation of the Tajammu al-Arabi (Arab Union), a militant, racist and Arabist organization that stressed the region's Arab nature. In 1976, a Libya-funded force led an abortive coup against Khartoum; in the ensuing rout, many took refuge in Darfur. Over 3,000 deaths resulted, leaving Darfuris traumatized.

As a result of the failed coup, the Khartoum government set about further exploiting Darfur. It allowed Hissein Habre, the most fervently anti-Libyan of the Chadian rebels, to use Darfur as his attack base in 1982; later, Idris Deby launched his anti-Habre coup from Darfur as well. However, subsequent governments held more lenient attitudes towards Libya, treating Darfur as their sacrificial lamb in order to obtain Libyan wealth and resources for their military campaigns. Thus, Libyan troops used Darfur as their base for Chadian interference throughout the early 1980s.

The concentration of so many forces in Darfur, acting upon so many different international agendas, caused intense friction within the indigenous population. Influenced by Libyan Arabist invective, Darfuri society became increasingly defined by the “Arab” and “non-Arab” distinction. Khartoum, Tripoli and N'Djamena had no qualms about manipulating ethnic tensions for their own political gains. Coupled with the drought conditions that persisted throughout the '70s and '80s, inflaming conflict over resources, Darfur was ripe for ethnic conflict.

Following the famine of 1984—against which no precaution was taken by Khartoum, despite previous notification, and for which little to no aid reached Darfur—Arab-African conflicts raged throughout Darfur. One early and ferocious conflict broke out in 1987, between the Fur tribe and 27 Arab nomadic groups organized into an “Arab Gathering.” Though it began as a simple quarrel over drought-shrunken resources, it grew enormously, and eventually claimed thousands of lives. News of a nomad “Janjaweed” militia emerged during this time, attacking and burning Fur settlements.

During the 1989 peace talks, the Arabs spoke of the Fur's plot to encroach upon nomad land and form an “African belt,” shutting out Arabs from fertile territory. The Fur, in turn, claimed that their opponents planned to drive them from their territories and occupy the abandoned settlements. While terms were eventually reached, this racially charged invective demonstrated just how effective the tripartite propaganda machine had proved. The ethnic stratification propounded by Chadian, Libyan and Khartoumi agents had successfully taken place, and its repercussions would tear at Darfur's very foundations in the decades to come.

For decades, Sudan had been rocked by civil war between its northern and southern regions. The South, largely peopled by animist and Christian African tribes, battled the Islamist awlad al-beled government for regional autonomy. The civil war raged from 1955 to 1972, and resumed in 1983; taking violent issue with the government's Islamist policies, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) grappled with the government for control of the South. Though affected indirectly by the conflict, Darfur saw little direct violence until 1991. Yahiya Ibrahim “Daud” Bolad was an ethnic Fur who had held high office in the National Islamic Front, Sudan's central party, under President Omar al-Bashir. Repulsed by the inherent racism he perceived in the awlad al-beled, and by its suppression of opposition to its Darfur policy, Bolad defected to the SPLA in 1989. In 1991, he led an SPLA offensive into southern Darfur. Bolad was betrayed to the police by Mahdists in late 1991; in January 1992, government-sponsored Arab militias (Murahleen) hunted him down and tortured him to death, ironically confirming his racial analysis.

In 1995, new districting policies were instated by the West Darfur government. The governor, Mohamed Ahmed Fadl, took the opportunity to fill new administrative posts with family and friends; the Masalit, whose land these new districts covered, rose up in protest. The period of 1996 through 1998 saw the development of a Masalit guerrilla movement, which was then ruthlessly suppressed by the Khartoum government.

The seeds of the current conflict have been forming for decades. Darfur has been marginalized since before Sudan's independence, and has seen this stagnation continue on through regime after regime. The government has always been dominated by the awlad al-beled; Darfur's awlad al-Gharb and its motley Africans, have never been viewed as the peers of the riverine elite. Khartoum's political maneuvering at the expense of Darfuri interest, coupled with its heedless ethnic policies, have led directly to the current insurgency. The ethnic separatism encouraged by Libyan and Khartoumi dicta has taken hold of Darfur's society, such that the rebellion against Khartoum is almost entirely African. The Arab tribes, fed pan-Arabist agitprop, have sided with their wealthy Nile Valley “brothers,” and the situation continues to deteriorate for African refugees. In order to perpetuate their hold on Sudanese society, the awlad al-beled have proven willing to resort to the cruelest of measures.