What Caused the War in Darfur?: A Diachronic Analysis
published in "Ask the Experts", Academic Herald (September 6, 2009)
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Introduction
The spasmodic and obduracy civil war in the Darfur region of western Sudan has been on the world’s agenda for quite sometime now. But the solutions to the conflict are far from sight due to the complex web of actors and competing interests that are involve. Compounding the volatile military situation is that the responses of the international community have been highly unclear and not encourage enough. Additionally, Darfur region is not assisted by the vacillation of the international community on how best to reach long lasting political solutions. The crisis, opposing the Government of the Sudan (GoS) and its proxy militia force (the Janjaweed) on the one hand, and the different regional rebel movements championed by the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on another hand, has resulted in the stupendous loss of lives and property. Between February 2003 when the war started and 2006, the conflict had resulted in more than 350,000 deaths, almost 2 million displaced (UNHCR, 2007. The State of the World’s Refugees 2006. [www.unhcr.org]), while mass raping, gangsterism, etc, are now the ‘normal’ ways of life in this ‘highly unfortunate’ region.
Undoubtedly, different versions of the conflict’s etiology are discernible in the literature. While a large number of interesting studies blame the conflict on racial factor, others see it from the prismatic lenses of ecology. Instead, I transcend these dominant views and solicit for alternative explanations for a better understanding of this Darfurian challenge. What is of importance is that the crisis can be analysed at three levels1, viz, (1) conflict between GoS and the Darfur region over the sharing of national wealth and power; (2) conflict occasioned by tribal rivalries championed by tribal elite; and, finally (3) conflict between the identity groups, i.e. between the African farmers and Arab pastoralists. Unquestionably, these three types of conflicts have the same root: the issue marginalization (both historical and contemporary) or what is refer to as ‘relative underdevelopment’ that has badly affected every facet of Darfur’s life; which in turn can be traced to governance crisis occasioned by the lopsided policies of Khartoum and its riverine-dominated Arab elite. Understandably, the ‘unjust’ policies of Khartoum are unsurprising since these were inherited from the British colonial administration that placed the Arabs above African ethnic groups. From the preceding, this article probes the underlying causes of the conflict using a diachronic approach and explains how the issue of marginalization of the region triggers the types of conflicts identified above, and, finally proffers some useful policy suggestions that might assist in halting the festering conflict trajectory, and ameliorating the current tragic situations in Darfur in particular and the Sudan in general.
Marginalization and the Making of the Civil War
Darfur is a region found in the western part of the Republic of the Sudan (RoS) and lies between latitude 10o—16o N and longitude 22o —27o 30’E. Darfur has an average area of 160,000 square miles, and is topographically diverse with high desert in the north flows into lush grassland in the south. The troubled region, with a population of 7 million, became part of the larger Anglo-Egyptian Sudan with the assassination of its last Fur Sultan, Ali Dinar, by the British forces on 6 November 1916. Geographically, in spite of the signing of the border agreement between London and Paris, in January1924, the official border delimitations between Darfur and the French Equatorial Africa (i.e. present day Chad and Central African Republic) did not materialise until 1938. Consequently, a significant number of ethnic groups along the border area were divided into two by international borders with consequences that are central to the relationships among the post-colonial states.
Thus history of Darfur and its marginalization is imperative when explaining the genesis of the ongoingvolatile situation. The recorded history of Darfur informs us that the: “region was the site of independent Sultanates until the Turco–Egyptian conquest of the late 1870’s, when it rallied early to Mahdiyya in the 1880’s and subsequently fostered a counter-Mahdiyya opposition when control from Omdurman became too oppressive” [Douglas Johnson, 2003. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil wars. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, p.139]. Towards the end of the 19th Century, the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ruled the region; that allowed a limited autonomy until 1914. Two years later (precisely in 1916) the Sultanate was incorporated into the Sudan. The ethnographic and sociological contexts of Darfur are, at best, fascinating because there are about thirty ethnic groups, all of whom have lived there for centuries, and all of them Muslims. Therefore, “despite talk of ‘Arabs’ and ‘Africans’, it is rarely possible to tell on the basis of skin colour which group an individual Darfurian belongs” (Alex de Waal 2004. “Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap”, London Review of Books, 15 August (http//www.lrb.co.uk). Explaining further, de Waal contends that: “there is such a long history of internal migration, mixing and intermarriage that ethnic boundaries are mostly a matter of convenience”. Moreover, “individuals, even whole groups, can shed one label and acquire another.” The 1916 incorporation of the Darfur region into the Sudan has three lifelong impacts on the political processes and structures of the region. Firstly, it resulted in the establishment of the system of indirect rule, while the region became the throttlehold of the Ansar sect and its Ummah party among the Fur, Southern Baqqara and Northern Darfurian tribes, although the Muslim Brotherhood later found followers in the region. It should be understood that the segregation of the Northern and Southern Sudan by the British officials was to curtail the spread of Arab nationalism. Secondly, the establishment of a modern political system in the entire Sudan and the concentration of political power in Khartoum fundamentally altered the traditional mechanism of governance so central in maintaining community relations, introducing over time the politicisation of authority through patronage. Thirdly, the incorporation launched the region in the political calculus of the Sudan’s political elite since the supports of the Darfurians speak volume in strengthening the legitimacy of the central state. Certainly, and in line with these developments, the people of the region sought to associate themselves with the government in power with the overall objectives of having easy access to power and influence in Khartoum so as to improve the socio-economic conditions of their beloved Darfur region. Despite this obvious ‘intangible’ inclusion in political processes at the centre, it is reported that, the people of the region were not expected to play an active role in national political life.
The lopsided policies of Khartoum and its riverine Arab political elite reached their zenith with the fragmentation of the Darfur region into three small States in 1994. The implications of this division are that it splits the majority ‘non-Arab’ Fur ethnic formation in the region across each of the three States, thereby becoming minority ethnic group in their respective new States. At another level, it is possible to argue that the division of Darfur is nothing, but a calculated effort to promote Arabism in the region. By this, Arab political elite are more favoured than their non-Arab counterpart so as to reinforcing Khartoum’s policies in the region. Contrary to Khartoum’s claims that the division would, definitely, devolve authority to the grassroots, it is argued that the slicing up of the authoritystretched the state’s meager resources thinly over a much inflated public sector that was unable to deliver basic social services.The frustrations of the Darfurians [the Fur, Massalit, Tungur, and Zaghawa] elite brought into the federal government by Dr. Hassan el-Turabi, a powerful political figure in the country, saw their exodus and found solace in the anonymous group known as the ‘Seekers of Truth and Justice’ which, in May 2000, issued a book titled: The Black Book: Imbalances of Power and Wealth in Sudan2 , that chronicled and detailed Sudan’s long-held national inequalities. Since independence in 1956, the book reveals that the socio-economic and political life of the country has been dominated and controlled by the three Arab-speaking ethnic groups of the North—the Shaigia, Jaaliyeen and Dangagla. On the economic flank for example, the Black Book argues that the northern Arabs dominate the Sudan’s Ministry of Finance. According to the book: “only 5% of its staff comes from outside of the northern region. Hiring of staff in the Ministry is primarily reserved for northerners. People from other regions have to contend with the demeaning jobs of tea-making and cleaning offices and toilets. Even the drivers are recruited from among northern school dropouts whose family members are working in the Ministry”3. Furthermore, the Black Book utilises the concept of I’mar Alarad [i.e. land development] to explicate the exploitative agricultural policy, and contends that such development should be entrusted to the governing authority. The imperative of this challenge to the authority ‘highlights the fallacy of situating the conflict within a wholly racial paradigm of “Arab” versus “African” interests’. This scenario and the monopoly of power by the Arabs of the riverine extractions had far reaching implications on the local conditions in Darfur. Indeed:
the weakened capacity of regional authorities to deal with practical realities has been a major contributing cause of the uprising. Increasing desertification of the area coincided with both the reduction of arable land and rainfall, and the emasculation of administrative structures to mediate sedentary and nomadic people of Darfur. Authoritative commentators have argued that the current conflict in Darfur has its origins in the devastating famine of the 1983/84, which took the lives of some 175,000 people, and the failure of governing structures to mitigate the impact of this livelihood challenge in the long term. The result was that a large number of nomadic people from Northern Darfur and Chad settled in the central farming belt area traditionally dominated by agricultural population. In 1971, incumbent President Nimeiri abolished the “native administration” system responsible for maintaining tribal relations, allocating of land for agriculture or grazing purposes and administering local courts as centres of conflict resolution, and replaced them with regional, district and area councils. The eradication of this tribal tier of governance meant that there was no credible authority in place to intervene in the complex and growing socio-ecological crisis in Darfur, leaving the path open to the militarisation of groups to defend their interests [Jooma Miriam Bibi 2006. “Darfur and the Battle for Khartoum”, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies’ (ISS) Situation Report, 4 September].
The foregoing analysis by Mariam Bibi Jooma clearly reveals the contradiction in the history of Sudan reinforced by the discriminatory policies engineered by the northern Arab elite deeply rooted in colonialism. The current Darfurian challenge to the President Omar El-Bashir led National Islamic Front government clearly shows that is a reflection of a Sudanese governance crisis at the national level.
The Sudan’s Darfur Civil War
Since the mid-1980s, low-intensity conflicts between the nomadic and farming communities, over land after occasional droughts, have been the dominant feature of Darfur. The regional drought of the mid-1980s became unbearable since it transformed the arable soil into desert with accompanied famine that lasted for more than a year. As a result, animosity ensued between the Arab herders and African farmers over the scramble for scarce natural productive resources of pasture and water for agricultural purposes. The resentment of the North Darfur’s nomads against the seasonal forays of Zaghawa herdsmen into Arab-occupied grazing lands commenced in earnest. African farmers grew hostile to camel-riding Arab nomads from the North who increasingly trampled their farmland as they roamed in search of pasture. This situation became paradox because the Arab farming groups: “who had once celebrated the annual return of Arab nomads, whose animals had fertilized their farmland and helped carry their harvests to market, began to impede their migration” [Samantha, 2004. “Dying in Darfur: Can the Ethnic Cleansing in Sudan be Stopped?”, The New Yorker Fact, 23 August, p. 37]. Sadly, the Khartoum-based authority paid a lackadaisical attitude to the crisis and did absolutely nothing to halt it. Compounding this fragile ethno-political and economic set-up is the fact that the age-old local/ tribal-administrative system had already been weakened in preference for state institutions that had little, or virtually no, relevance and legitimacy in Darfur. Since Darfur lacked a trusted, tested and preferred conflict resolution mechanism, the gulf between and among the rival tribes widened, and, consequently started gathering weapons to defend their vested economic interests. The period between 1987 and 1989, witnessed a fierce battle between Fur farming and Arab camel herder groups with huge human and material loss to both sides. Even though a local inter-tribal conference was held in 1989, its recommendations for compensation and punishment went largely unheeded—leaving outstanding grievances that would explode fourteen years later. The ‘worst’ conflict in Darfur started in February 2003 and its escalation is linked to the signing of the Naivasha agreement of 26 May 2004 between the GoS and the SPLM/A. The exclusion from the peace process of all, except the GoS and the SPLM/A, apparently became the deadly price of the agreement. Other interests in the country were considered secondary or at best, relegated to the background, and other numerous conflagrations, either in the North or South, were sidelined, including those in Darfur. In order to stop being further politically marginalized as a result of the Naivasha agreement, an aggressively secular and black nationalist group known as the Darfur Liberation Front [DLF], later renamed itself the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army [SLM/A] mounted a series of attacks on government positions in Darfur and vowed to continue fighting until Khartoum acceded to its demands and end the region’s marginalization4. The SLM/A believed that their actions would definitely attract world’s attentions and correct the ‘erroneous’ impression that the peace deal with the SPLM/A is sufficient enough to resolve Sudan’s multilayered crises In a quick succession, another moderately Islamist group known as the Justice and Equality Movement [JEM] took up arms against Khartoum.
The two insurgent groups started attacking the Sudanese government forces’ positions in earnest. Although, Khartoum had earlier dismissed the Darfurian insurgency as mere bandits, and clearly one of the common Darfur’s perennial problems, but the military feat of the rebels, undoubtedly, discredited Khartoum’s claims and became a source of embarrassment with rebels attacking el-Fasher airport and destroying half a dozen military aircraft. Facing the reality of the deteriorating security situations in Darfur and impending anarchy, and threat to its own hegemony, Khartoum opted for courting the assistance of militias, drawn majorly from the nomadic peoples of Darfur that had been at daggers drawn with their Darfurian sedentary farmers and pastoralists counterpart for years, to fight with scorched-earth tactics. These militias were formed from diverse backgrounds: there were a group of northern ‘Arab’ camel nomads, known as the Ben Halba fursan, and the mercenary former Libyan Islamic Legionnaires. The two groups merged to form what is now known as Janjaweed which Khartoum supports with arms and virtually unlimited freedom to do what they like. The Janjaweed militias were unleashed on local peasants and general civilian population. The interference and involvement of countries like Chad, Eritrea, and China through their financial and/or military supports to one Darfurian group or the other has added international flavour to the conflict with serious tension along Sudan-Chad border.
Summing-Up and the Way Forward
Rescuing the situation and returning to normalcy is very simple and simultaneously complex. It is simple in the sense that we need to recognise the fact that the proximate causes of the conflict can be located at the domestic environment, but the situation becomes more complex with the involvement of external actors and interests especially the neighouring countries, China, some Arab countries, etc. Then the search for sustainable peace in the region has to begin from Darfur itself. In this context, the age-old and well-recognised traditional Darfur conflict reconciliation mechanisms will definitely resolve the intra-tribal conflicts but with a caveat. This has to be done with the concurrent socio-economic development of the region from the federal purse. And at the same time, Khartoum needs to jettison its lopsided policies in favour of the one that is inclusive of all ethnic nationalities in the country. I raised this caveat because such traditional conflict reconciliation mechanisms have been part and parcel of resolving Darfur conflicts but have not achieved the goal of having a sustainable peace in the region. For, the underdevelopment that pervades Darfur where the competitions for limited productive resources are severe. Economic development of the region through irrigation, infrastructure development, etc will go a long way in resolving the conflicts permanently.It should be kept in mind that the RoS is not the only African state that is confronted with this kind of problem. Sudan needs to borrow a lesson from Mali. Mali, a West African country, came out of its drawn-out war with the northern based Touareg rebel movement known as the Mouvements et Fronts Unifies de l’Azaouad (MFUA), with a post-conflict peace-building process that placed premium on the socio-economic developments of the rebel held region. The rapid socio-economic developments and complete transformation of the area, undoubtedly, brought the sense of belonging to the hitherto dissatisfied armed groups that eventually saw peace brought back to the entire country. Nigeria is currently on the same path with the recent announcement by the country’s leadership of the establishment of the Niger Delta Ministry purposely to look into the affairs of the volatile oil-rich Niger Delta area of the country. It is hoped that with the creation of the Ministry, the region will witness rapid socio-economic developments. The Second aspect of the problem centers on the central state itself. Apparently, the Arab elite of northern extraction has dominated political and economic powers in the Sudan. This should not be so. Sudan needs a genuine federal system with equal representations of all interests, which should translate into equitable distribution of the country’s resources and wealth. This will definitely enhance and encourage the sense of belonging among Darfurians.
The complex aspect of resolving the festering conflict is how to stop the internationalisation of this domestic conflict. That is how to insulate the conflict from external interference. The first task is for the international community is to let both Libya and Chad realise the havoc their actions are causing in this region and as a deterrence measure sanction the recalcitrant state and any country supporting the belligerents as well as increasing financial assistance to accelerate economic development of the Darfur in particular, and Sudan in general purposely to reverse the country’s seemingly irreversible decay. It is in this context that the United Nations (UN)—African Union (AU) peace support mission in the country will meaningfully address this worst Darfurian challenge. Hence, the Sudanese state will definitely mirror Ali Mazrui’s assertion that:
Islam and westernism have been part of Africa’s response to the imperative of looking outward to the wider world. But Africa’s own ancestors are waiting to ensure that Africa also remembers to look inward to its own past. Before a seed germinated, it must first decay. A mango tree grows out of a decaying seed. A new Africa may be germinating in the decay of the present one—and the ancestors are presiding over the process (see: Ali, A. Mazrui, 1985. “Multiple Marginality of the Sudan”, in Y.F. Hassan (ed.), Sudan and Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press).
1 The three levels of the conflict and underdevelopment as the root of Darfur’s conflict have been extensively dealt with in my paper entitled: Contesting Exclusion: Uneven Underdevelopment and the Genesis of the Sudan’s Darfur War (Currently undergoing peer-review process at the Centre for African Studies, University of Florida at Gainesville for publication in African Study Quarterly).
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3 Some scholars have faulted the claims of ‘The Seekers of Truth and Justice’ simply because the book does not render a balance account of these discriminations. Undoubtedly, there is a clear marginalization of the non-Arab ethnicities in Sudan, but the point is that the Arabs constitute more than 30% of the Sudan’s population of which only 5% represents the three favoured Arab groups. In a nutshell, other Arabs are victims of neglect and marginalization as witness in Darfur. Little wonder why William Wallis argued that ‘The Seekers of Truth and Justice’ are “motivated by political ambition and were prepared to stir up ethnic hatred to meet their ends”. (For details see, William Wallis, 2004. “The Black Book History or Darfur’s Darkest Chapter”, Financial Times, 21 August).
4 The SLM/A’s claims are well founded going by the happenings in Darfur. Samantha power contends that, “Darfur’s inhabitants felt that the region was being ignored. The Sudanese government rarely paid for road building and repair, schools, hospitals, civil servants, or communications facilities in Darfur. Those who considered themselves ethnically African were angered by the government’s practice of awarding most of the top posts in the region to local Arabs, even though they were thought to be the minority there. Disgruntled Darfurians had appealed to the government to include their concerns on the agenda of the US-backed peace process. This effort failed, and many concluded that, if they never wanted to see their needs met, they would have to do what John Garang had done in the South: take up arms against the Sudanese government and try to get the world’s attention”.
