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Darfur is a desert region located in the far west of Sudan, the biggest country in Africa. It is home to numerous tribal groups, many of which have a long history of intermarriage and economic cooperation. All are black, African, and Muslim.
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Darfur is a desert region located in the far west of Sudan, the biggest country in Africa.
It is home to numerous tribal groups, many of which have a long history of intermarriage and economic cooperation. All are black, African, and Muslim.
Since violence broke out in 2003, tribal groups have increasingly identified themselves as either African or Arab.
The roots of today’s ongoing conflict date back to 1916, the year British forces invaded Darfur to put down an uprising against Sudan’s British and Egyptian rulers.
Conflicts often broke out between herders (who were mostly Arabs) and farmers (who were mostly Africans). The tribal courts prevented these conflicts from getting out of hand.
After the British left Sudan in 1956, competition for political offices arose among Darfur’s Arabs and Africans.
The Arabs, who formed a slight majority, looked to elections as a means of ending centuries of largely non-Arab rule, while the large African tribes, notably the Fur, saw elections as a chance to legitimize their historic hold on political power in Darfur.
In the 1980s, a series of droughts in Darfur worsened inter-tribal relations. As good agricultural land became scarce, African farmers who had traditionally allowed Arab herders to graze cattle on their farms began barring access.
Stripped of their livelihood, many young Darfuri Arabs were recruited by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. In the late 1980s, they joined Arabs from other countries to fight for the establishment of the Arab Belt, an Arab super-state spanning most of northern Africa.
Qaddafi’s Arabs were defeated by the Chadian army, leaving the Darfuri Arabs to return to their homes with guns and a dangerous ideology of Arab supremacy.
Even while they fought each other, Darfuris from all tribes had traditionally found common cause in resenting the Sudanese government. This started to change in 1989, when Omar al-Bashir, an Arab general, came to power in a coup.
As president, Bashir surrounded himself by a cabal of ruthless, power-hungry military men who believed passionately that Sudan, and all its natural resources, belonged to the Arabs.
In 1992, these men ordered the Sudanese military to work with Arab militias in removing a non-Arab people, the Nuba, from a mountainous region in southern Darfur.
Six years later, they orchestrated a similarly brutal campaign to take control of the oil fields in Sudan’s largely non-Arab southern half.
The few Darfuri Africans serving in Bashir’s government were quickly purged. They returned home to form one of Darfur’s two main rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
The other main rebel group was the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA). In 2003, SLA rebels attacked government troops at Darfur’s El Fasher airport, demanding that Khartoum end its long neglect of the Darfur region.
Rather than deal with the rebels’ demands, the Sudanese government armed Arab militias, the janjaweed, and charged them with putting down the Darfuri uprising.
Starting in the summer of 2003, the janjaweed rode into African communities, killing and raping the inhabitants. Survivors fled in terror.
Word of the atrocities spread in 2004, prompting the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution calling on the Sudanese government to disarm the janjaweed.
No punishment was threatened for non-compliance, and collaboration between the Sudanese military and the janjaweed reportedly continued. Thousands more Darfuri Africans died, and entire villages were destroyed.
Several thousand African Union troops arrived in 2004 and 2005 to serve as peacekeepers.
But, in a region bigger than California, there was a limit to what they could achieve. Attacks by the janjaweed persisted, and refugee camps filled up.
