Darfur

Darfur

Where should we start to look for the historical roots of this latest of Sudan’s wars? Between 1881and 1885 Sudan was ruled by a boat-builder from Aba Island in Darfur. Proclaimed as the Mahdi, he was a legendry Islamic scholar and brilliant military tactician who united the constantly warring tribes of Sudan and crushed the Egyptian and British forces sent against him. His ansar, a rag-tag army armed with swords and spears, was always victorious during his 4 year reign, and united Sudan under Sharia law until al-Mahdi’s death from typhus . Tribes in the Mahdi’s Kordofan region of Sudan are some of the principals in the complex mix of traditional tribal warfare, a national struggle for the leadership of the country, desertification, the long war with Chad, Islamic fundamentalist extremism, and the usual ignorant and hypocritical remarks from the USA. Some of the Mahdi’s zeal for fundamentalist Islamic rule, in the style of Al Qaida, drives the JEM, one of the rebel groups that initiated this war. A long , smoldering religious

war has been blended with the war with Chad. Chad’s president, a member of the Zaghawa tribe, has supported his tribe’s rebel movement against the government of Sudan. The grievances of the rebels are that they have been deprived of government funds that other regions receive. The signing of the peace accords ending Sudan’s other civil war, and the benefits conferred on the southern rebels, seems to have driven the Darfur rebels to attack government bases and police stations. Prior to these attacks, the war in Darfur had been a continuous violent confrontation between some groups of herders and pastaoralists. Causes for war have been growing as desertification has been steadily decreasing the regions resouces while the population has been increasing. The government’s response to these attacks, with the loss of many thousands of lives and the uprooting of 2 million people, is common knowledge now.

One aspect of this war that seems to have become a central feature of new stories is its “racial” character. --The Arabs are committing genocide against the Balck Africans-- is the usual formulation in the press. The truth, of course, is that, by-and-large, in Darfur everyone is Muslim, everyone is African, and everyone is Black. The designation of Arab or African is only partially dependent on which of the heavily inter-married tribe you were born into, or which arabised version of your Nilo-Saharan language you speak, but also on whether you farm or herd, or how prosperous you are. Some tribes change their “ethnic” label from time to time. Janjaweed, a term traditionally applied to nomadic bandits and now to any irregular paramilitary band, is a description of activity rather than an ethnic label. A 40-year-long cycle of desertification, abandonment of unproductive lands, migration to areas with water that are