DARFUR IN PERSPECTIVE
By Professor David Hoile
Published by The European - Sudanese Public Affairs Council
Introduction
 The war that has been fought in Darfur over
the past two years has been a humanitarian disaster.
The violence is said to have amounted to "a demographic
catastrophe".[1]
Hundreds of villages have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have
died as a direct or indirect result of the conflict.
The United Nations’ Darfur Humanitarian Profile,
for the period October-December 2004,
estimated
that there were 1.65 million internally displaced
people in Darfur and that 2,279,266 people had been affected
by the conflict. [2] It seems that as of January 2005, however,
the humanitarian crisis may have started to ease.
In its year-end report, the Office of the United
Nations Resident and Humanitarian Co-ordinator for
the Sudan, reported that the 90-day humanitarian action plan,
from June to August 2004, had been a success.
It further reported that “by 31 December
2004 the humanitarian situation for most of the 2.2 million people
affected is stabilized, due to the provision of life saving inputs and
the efforts of 8,500 aid workers…The catastrophic mortality
figures predicted by some quarters have not materialised”.
The UN reported that the number of aid workers
had increased from 200 in March 2004 to 8,500 by the end of 2004. [3] In January 2005, the World Health Organisation
confirmed that food and health access, water supply, and sanitation services were making a significant difference in addressing the crisis. [4] This came in the same month as the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement ending the long-running civil war in southern Sudan, and which might serve as a model for resolving
the Darfur conflict. [5]
And, at the end of January, the United Nations
Commission of Inquiry on Darfur reported back
to the UN Secretary-General, stating that while there
had been serious violations of human rights in the course of
the war in Darfur, allegations of genocide were
unfounded. [6] These developments afford the international
community some space in which to review the crisis
and its causes and look towards its resolution. [7] For
all the column inches of media coverage of the war, there are
still a number of essentially unanswered questions
concerning the Darfur crisis. One of the first
must be what triggered the systematic outbreak of violence
in Darfur in February 2003? This question is at the heart of understanding
the dynamics of the conflict. Given concerted international
attempts at peace-making and offers of regional autonomy, a
second question is what sustains the conflict? A third question concerns
whether any of the parties are dragging their feet in the peace process;
and, if so, why? A fourth question is what is the real position with
regard to humanitarian access to Darfur? A fifth question asks
the extent to which flawed interpretations and
questionable projections of the crisis – some
of them the sort of propaganda invariably associated with
war and particularly civil war – hinder both reconciliation
and peace-building while at the same time skewing
and adversely influencing international opinion.
And, of course, following on from this question,
relates to the credibility of claims of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
Darfur in Outline
The Darfur region, divided into the states of North, South and
West Darfur, is the western-most part
of Sudan. Darfur’s
160,000 square miles make up one fifth
of Sudan. It is an expanse of desert in the north
through to savannah in the south. Geographically, it is
made up
of a plateau some 2,000 to 3,000 feet
above sea-level. The volcanic Jebel Marra mountain range
runs north and south for a distance of some 100
miles, rising to between 5,000 and 6,000 feet. Darfur’s
six million or so inhabitants comprise one seventh
of Sudan’s population.
They are made
up of farmers growing sorghum, millet, groundnuts and other market
vegetables and nomadic cattle and camel pastoralists. Formerly
an independent sultanate, and named after the Fur tribe (“Dar”,
land, of the Fur), Darfur was incorporated into Sudan by the
British government
in 1917. Some of its borders were not finalised until as late
as 1938. Previously administered as one entity, Darfur was divided
into three states in the early 1990s. Al-Fasher,
the historic capital of Darfur, is the capital
of North Darfur state; Nyala is the capital of South Darfur
state;
and al-Geneina is the capital of West Darfur state. Each state
has a regional assembly, and a governor appointed
by central government. Darfur lies in western
Sudan. It is strategically placed, bordering Libya
to the north-west, Chad to the west, and the Central African
Republic
to the south-west.
The largest ethnic group within Darfur are the Fur people, who
consist mainly of settled subsistence farmers
and traditional cultivators. Other non-Arab, “African”,
groups include the Zaghawa nomads, the Meidob,
Massaleit, Dajo, Berti, Kanein, Mima, Bargo, Barno, Gimir, Tama,
Mararit,
Fellata, Jebel, Sambat and Tunjur. The mainly pastoralist Arab
tribes in Darfur include Habania, Beni Hussein, Zeiyadiya, Beni
Helba, Ateefat,
Humur, Khuzam, Khawabeer, Beni Jarrar, Mahameed,
Djawama, Rezeigat, and the Ma’aliyah. [8] Sudanese sociologists
have suggested that the population in Darfur can
also be divided into four groups: the Baggara
(cattle nomads), the Aballa (camel nomads), the
Zurga (a Darfur name for non-Arab peasants derived from the
Arabic word
for black), and the inhabitants of the urban centres. [9] A more
culturally-based classification distinguishes between four groups:
the Arabs;
the fully Arabised; the partly Arabised; and the non-Arabised.
The “Arabs” are the native Arabic speakers: the
Rezeigat, the Zeiyadiya, Beni Hussein, and the Djawama nomads who, as
a result of intermarriage with the indigenous
Darfurians, look much darker than non-Sudanese
Arabs. The “fully Arabised” group is
made up of those Darfurians, such as the Berti,
who have lost their native languages to Arabic.
The third, “partly Arabised” group is made
up of those communities such as the Fur, the Zaghawa,
and the Meidob, who have kept their native languages,
but also speak Arabic fluently. The last “
non-Arabised” group consists of tribes that speak very
little Arabic, for example, the Massaleit, some
sections of the Zaghawa, the Berti, the Mima,
the Tama, and the Kanein. [10] A linguistically-based analysis would
categorise as “African” those whose motherr-languages
belonging
to the Nilo-Saharan language group. [11]
Darfur is an ecologically fragile area and had already seen
growing– and often armed – conflict
over natural resources between some 80
tribes and clans loosely divided between nomadic and sedentary communities.
Sudanist academics such as Richard Lobban and Sean O’Fahey
have stated: “This conflict has emerged at
the present in the context of persistent ecological
crises of increased desertification and lack
of production and limited grazing lands among the pastoralist
and agricultural peoples.” [12] Professor
Fahey has noted that desertification accelerated
by droughts led to pressure on water and grazing resources…Conflicts
over wells that in earlier times had been settled with
spears or mediation became much more intractable in an era
awash with guns.” [13] Desertification
and drought had forced a number of tribal migrations
from the 1970s onwards and by the late 1980s, as noted by Darfurian
writer Ismail Abakr Ahmed, “the migrant groups
increased in numbers, and in the absence of
social harmony, tribal factions developed and culminated in violent conflicts.” [14]
These inter-tribal and intra-tribal conflicts,
some between nomadic communities and farmers,
and some within nomadic and farming communities
themselves, were a feature from the late 1950s onwards. The
following are some of the armed tribal conflicts that have taken place
within Darfur since independence: 1957, Meidob against Kababish caused
by mutual raiding for camels and disputed territorial access; 1968,
Rezeigat against Ma’aliyah, caused by disputed access
and livestock theft; 1969, Zaghawa against Northern
Rezeigat, caused by disputed access to pasture
and water and livestock theft; 1974, Zaghawa against
Birgid, caused by disputed access to farming land and livestock theft;
1976, Beni Helba against Northern Rezeigat, caused by disputed access
to pasture and water and livestock theft; 1980, Northern Rezeigat against
Beni Helba, Birgid, Dajo, and Fur, caused by disputed access
to pasture and water and livestock theft; 1980,
Taisha against Salamat, caused by disputed access
to pasture and water and livestock theft; 1982, Kababish
and Khawabeer against Meidob, Berti and Zeiyadiya, caused by
disputed access to pasture and water and livestock theft; 1984, Missairiya
against Rezeigat, caused by disputed access to pasture and water
and livestock theft; 1987, Gimir and Mararit against Fellata, caused
by disputed access to pasture and water and livestock theft;
1989, the Fur of Kabkabiya against the Zaghawa,
over disputed territorial access and livestock
theft; 1989, the Fur against various Arab tribes, caused
by disputed territorial access and political conflict; and 1989, Gimir against Zaghawa, caused by disputed territorial access
and livestock theft. [15] Six of these thirteen conflicts were fought
between Arab nomadic communities: four of the
conflicts were between parties who were both non-Arab.
All of these were serious armed conflicts, sometimes
involving thousands of tribesmen, with combatants increasingly
well armed with automatic weapons and vehicles. As is also apparent
from the tribes involved, the violence was both within and across
ethnic divides. There were also clear cross-border dimensions with
the involvement of tribes such as the Salamat which straddle
the Chad-Sudan frontier. western Sudan (all of which are Muslim) has
been endemic since the late 1980s, when a war
broke out between the Arabs and the Fur, two of the ethnic
groups involved in the present conflict.” [16] Much
of this violence also had cross-border implications,
with affected communities often straddling the
Sudan-Chad frontier. From 1983-87, as some northern Darfur
tribes moved south into the central farming belt because of the drought,
the Zaghawa and Ma’aliyah came into armed conflict
with Fur communities. This conflict and others
involving the Fur led to thousands of deaths,
tens of thousands of displaced Darfurians and the destruction of
thousands of homes. It was settled by a government-mediated intertribal
conference in 1989. The 1990s were marked by three distinct conflicts.
In 1990 the southern Sudan People’s Liberation
Army unsuccessfully tried to start an insurgency,
led by Fur activist Daud Bolad, amongst non-Arab
communities; in 1996 there was a longrunning conflict
between the Rezeigat and the Zaghawa; and from 1997- 99
there was fighting in western Darfur between the Massaleit and
some Arab tribes. The SPLA-inspired insurgency
was defeated within a matter of months and, generally
speaking, inter-tribal conferences and conciliation,
ajaweed and mutamarat al sulh, settled most of the other disputes.
Ahmed, for example, documents 14 inter-tribal conferences amongst Darfurian communities up to 1999.
Amnesty International’s picture of Darfur pre-rebellion
also overlaps with inter-ethnic tensions: “The
lack of employment opportunities, the proliferation
of small arms and the example of militia raiding and looting
in Kordofan and the south, have encouraged banditry, acts of armed
robbery and general insecurity.” [17] The simple fact
is that all these are factors which existed
before 2003. An insurgency amongst “African” tribes
had been tried and had failed; tribal conflicts had come and
gone; ecological factors had been there for
some time; the region was awash with weapons.
What was it that made the key difference in sparking and fanning the war in 2003? What was it that turned limited, low-intensity conflicts between the pastoral and arable farming
groups in Darfur into a well-organised, well-armed
and well-resourced civil war? Why was it that
for the first time ever warring tribes in Darfur had systematically attacked
and killed soldiers and policemen – historically
seen as arbiters within regional conflicts?
The answers possibly lie with the answer to a final question,
perhaps the most elementary one – a
question not asked by the international community
and especially not by the media – which is the
old Latin one of Cui Prodest, or whom does
it benefit? Khartoum certainly has not. Several
years of painstaking diplomacy, together with the peace talks which
culminated in the end of the civil war in the south, had brought Sudan
to the verge of normalising its relations with the international community.
To somehow believe that the Sudanese government set out to
destroy all that work by recklessly embarking on “genocide” in Darfur
just as it was poised to rejoin the community of nations would
be naïve. The Zaghawa and Fur communities
have similarly not benefited, having borne
the brunt of a ruthless insurgency and counter-insurgency. The
close involvement, both in the preparations for the war, and
then in the war itself, of veteran Islamist
politicians and paramilitaries drawn from
the Popular Congress is evident. These forces have used Darfur
as a battlefield on which to wage war against
the Khartoum government– and ironically
were, in large part, the same people who ruthlessly put down
the attempted insurrection in 1990. Previously sidelined in Khartoum
politics from 1999 onwards, the Darfur conflict has brought these
Islamists back to centre stage, and, in so doing, the Popular Congress
has changed the electoral dynamics of western Sudan.
Footnotes |
 |
|
