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Articles ArchiveReturn
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Darfur:
Destruction and Stalled Negotiations
By Rene Wadlow
The large-scale demonstration
in Washington D.C. on April 30 called attention to the difficult
and brutal conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Just as individuals and
NGOs were calling for action, the United Nations World Food Programme
indicated that it would have to cut back on help to Darfur refugees
because of a lack of funds. In fact, many refugees and internally
displaced persons are already not serviced by the World Food
Programme as they live in zones where UN and NGO aid workers
are prevented from going, having been attacked in the Darfur
conflicts and the spill-over violence in Chad.
The Darfur conflict is complex
and is not directly related to the North-South division of Sudan
which had led to the two phases of the North-South Civil War
(1954-1972, 1982-2005). Therefore, analysis of the Darfur violence
with some historical background is necessary in order to propose
useful plans for a compromise peace plan.
The on-going conflicts in the
provinces of Darfur, western Sudan are a textbook example of
the programmed escalation of violence that ends up out of control.
It is increasingly difficult for both the insurgency and the
government-backed forces to de-escalate the conflict which has
been called with reason "genocide". It will be even
more difficult after the war to get the pastoralists and the
settled agriculturalists to live together again in a relatively
cooperative way.
Darfur (the home of the Fur)
was always marginal to the politics of modern Sudan. In the 19th
century, Darfur, about the size of France, was an independent
Sultanate loosely related to the Ottoman Empire. It was on a
major trade route from West Africa to Egypt and so populations
from what is now Northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Chad joined
the older ethnic groups of the area, the Fur, Masalit, the Zaghawa
and the Birgit. Nomads from Libya also moved south into Darfur.
As the population density was low, a style of life with mutual
interaction between pastoral herdsmen and settled agriculturalists
with some livestock developed. Increasingly, however, there was
ever-greater competition for water and forage made scarce by
environmental degradation and the spread of the desert.
France and England left Darfur
as a buffer zone between the French colonial holdings what
is now Chad and the Anglo-Egyptian controlled Sudan. French-English
rivalry in West Africa had nearly led earlier to a war, and so
a desert buffer was of more use than its low agricultural and
livestock production would provide to either European colonial
power. It was only in 1916 during the First World War when French-English
colonial rivalry in Africa paled in front of the common German
enemy that the English annexed Darfur to the Sudan without asking
anyone in Darfur or the Sudan if such a 'marriage' was desirable.
Darfur continued its existence
as an environmentally fragile area of Sudan. It was marginal
in economics but largely self-sufficient. Once Sudan was granted
its independence in 1956, Darfur became politically as well as
economically marginal. Darfur's people have received less education,
less healthcare, less development assistance, and fewer government
posts than any other region. Southerners were given governmental
and administrative posts in the hope of diminishing the violent
North-South divide. There was no such incentive to 'share the
wealth' with Darfur. Its political weight was even lessened when
Darfur in a 1995 'administrative reform' was divided into three
provinces: Northern Darfur, Western Darfur, and Southern Darfur.
Some areas that were historically Darfur were added to Northern
and Western Bahr El-Ghazal. The division of Darfur did not lead
to better local government nor to additional services from the
central government. It must be added that Darfur's political
leadership had a special skill in supporting national political
leaders just as the national leaders were about to lose power
first Al Sadig Al Mahdi and then Hassan al-Turabi.
During the North-South civil
war, as a largely Muslim area, Darfur supported the North and
some militias from Darfur formed raiding parties to attack villages
in Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. However, Darfur's leaders counted
for little in the long North-South negotiations which finally
led to a peace and power-sharing accord in January 2005. Wealth
from the oil fields, largely situated on the edge of the North-South
dividing line had been a prime motivation for the peace agreement.
Wealth and development programs were to give a new life to the
South and to the government in the North.
Ironically, it was the North-South
peace negotiations which set the stage for the Darfur revolt.
In 2000, Darfur's political leadership had met to draw up a 'Black
Book' which detailed the region's systematic under-representation
in national government since independence. The 'Black Book' marked
the start of a rapprochement between the Islamists and the secular
radicals of Darfur which took form three years later with the
rise of the more
secular Sudan Liberation Army
(SLA) and the Islamist-leaning Justice and Equality Movement
(JEM). However, at the level of the central government, the 'Black
Book' led to no steps to increase the political and economic
position of Darfur. This lack of reaction convinced some in Darfur
that only violent action would bring recognition and compromise
as the war in the South had done.
In July 2002, the government
of Sudan and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement
signed a framework protocol for peace in Machakos, Kenya. It
seemed that peace was at hand. Therefore, if Darfur was to share
in the potential new prosperity, armed violence to gain attention
had to be undertaken soon. The two Darfur groups, SLA and JEM,
started to structure themselves, gather weapons and men. The
idea was to strike in a spectacular way which would lead the
government to take notice and to start wealth-sharing negotiations.
Not having read the 'Little Red Book' of Mao, they did not envisage
a long drawn out conflict of the countryside against the towns
of Darfur.
By February 2003, the two groups
were prepared to act, and in one night attacked and destroyed
many of Sudan's military planes based at El Fasher. The Sudan
military lost in one night more planes than it had in 20 years
of war against the South. However, the central government's 'security
elite' battle hardened from its fight against the South
but knowing that the regular army was over-extended and tired
of fighting decided to use against Darfur techniques that
it had used with some success against the South: to arm and to
give free reign to militias and other irregular forces. Thus
the government armed and directed existing armed groups in Darfur
popular defence forces and existing tribal militias. The
government also started pulling together a fluid and shadowy
group, now called the Janjaweed ("the evildoers on horseback").
To the extent that the make up of the Janjaweed is known, it
seems to be a collection of bandits, of Chadians who had used
Darfur as a safe haven for the long-lasting insurgencies in Chad,
remains of Libya's Islamic Forces which had once been under the
control of the Libyan government but left wandering when Libyan
policy changed, probably some daytime police and military - the
Janjaweed acting nearly always at night - and some traditional
nomad leaders from Darfur.
The central government gave these
groups guns, uniforms, equipment, and indications where to attack
by first bombing villages but no regular pay. Thus the militias
had to pay themselves by looting homes, crops, livestock, by
taking slaves and raping women and girls. Village after village
were destroyed on the pretext that some in the village supported
either the SLA or the JEM; crops were burned; water wells filled
with sand. As many people as possible fled to Chad or to areas
thought safer in Darfur. As the then acting UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights Dr Bertrand Ramcharan stressed " First,
there is a reign of terror in this area; second, there is a scorched-earth
policy; third, there is repeated war crimes and crimes against
humanity; and fourth, this is taking place before our very eyes."
The United Nations set up an
International Commission of Inquiry which confirmed the worst
fears of the deliberately destructive nature of the conflict
whose consequences are to destroy a way of life. The Commission
of Inquiry as well as the UN Commission on Human Rights has recommended
that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity
be tried by the International Criminal Court. This will be the
first major test of the new court and thus will be important
to watch and analyse.
Darfur represents a classic case
of how violence gets out of control and goes beyond the aims
for which it was first used. For the moment, it is hard to see
how the violence can be reduced. The African Union has sent in
military observers to oversee a non-functioning ceasefire. Talks
between the government of Sudan and the JEM and SLA leadership
in the Nigerian capital Abuja have broken down. The Sudanese
government has honed its survivalist instincts for a long time
ably playing its 'Arab' character for support within the Arab
League and its 'African' role within the African Union. There
is little external support for the JEM and SLA. However, they
have been able to get arms on the international 'grey market'.
It is not clear to what extent the central government can control
or disarm as the UN has requested - the Janjaweed even
if they wanted to.
Some have recommended that a
United Nations-led force replace the African Union observers
who have been ill equipped and poorly led. The Sudanese government
has resisted such a replacement policy. There should be, in any
case, an increased cooperation and mutual support between the
UN system and the African Union.
There are splits in the JEM and
SLA insurgencies which make negotiations with the government
of Sudan all the more difficult. The interests of many people
in Darfur are not represented by either the government or the
insurgencies, but it is nearly impossible for other voices to
be heard.
At this stage, we need to build
awareness and try to establish contacts with moderate individuals
and groups in Sudan to see the possibilities of concerted action.
Rene Wadlow is editor of the online journal of world
politics www.transnational-perspectives.org and the representative
to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens.
Formerly, he was professor and Director of Research of the Graduate
Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva.
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Articles Archive By Rene Wadlow The large-scale demonstration in Washington D.C. on April 30 called attention to the difficult and brutal conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Just as individuals and NGOs were calling for action, the United Nations World Food Programme indicated that it would have to cut back on help to Darfur refugees because of a lack of funds. In fact, many refugees and internally displaced persons are already not serviced by the World Food Programme as they live in zones where UN and NGO aid workers are prevented from going, having been attacked in the Darfur conflicts and the spill-over violence in Chad. The Darfur conflict is complex and is not directly related to the North-South division of Sudan which had led to the two phases of the North-South Civil War (1954-1972, 1982-2005). Therefore, analysis of the Darfur violence with some historical background is necessary in order to propose useful plans for a compromise peace plan. The on-going conflicts in the provinces of Darfur, western Sudan are a textbook example of the programmed escalation of violence that ends up out of control. It is increasingly difficult for both the insurgency and the government-backed forces to de-escalate the conflict which has been called with reason "genocide". It will be even more difficult after the war to get the pastoralists and the settled agriculturalists to live together again in a relatively cooperative way. Darfur (the home of the Fur) was always marginal to the politics of modern Sudan. In the 19th century, Darfur, about the size of France, was an independent Sultanate loosely related to the Ottoman Empire. It was on a major trade route from West Africa to Egypt and so populations from what is now Northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Chad joined the older ethnic groups of the area, the Fur, Masalit, the Zaghawa and the Birgit. Nomads from Libya also moved south into Darfur. As the population density was low, a style of life with mutual interaction between pastoral herdsmen and settled agriculturalists with some livestock developed. Increasingly, however, there was ever-greater competition for water and forage made scarce by environmental degradation and the spread of the desert. France and England left Darfur as a buffer zone between the French colonial holdings what is now Chad and the Anglo-Egyptian controlled Sudan. French-English rivalry in West Africa had nearly led earlier to a war, and so a desert buffer was of more use than its low agricultural and livestock production would provide to either European colonial power. It was only in 1916 during the First World War when French-English colonial rivalry in Africa paled in front of the common German enemy that the English annexed Darfur to the Sudan without asking anyone in Darfur or the Sudan if such a 'marriage' was desirable. Darfur continued its existence as an environmentally fragile area of Sudan. It was marginal in economics but largely self-sufficient. Once Sudan was granted its independence in 1956, Darfur became politically as well as economically marginal. Darfur's people have received less education, less healthcare, less development assistance, and fewer government posts than any other region. Southerners were given governmental and administrative posts in the hope of diminishing the violent North-South divide. There was no such incentive to 'share the wealth' with Darfur. Its political weight was even lessened when Darfur in a 1995 'administrative reform' was divided into three provinces: Northern Darfur, Western Darfur, and Southern Darfur. Some areas that were historically Darfur were added to Northern and Western Bahr El-Ghazal. The division of Darfur did not lead to better local government nor to additional services from the central government. It must be added that Darfur's political leadership had a special skill in supporting national political leaders just as the national leaders were about to lose power first Al Sadig Al Mahdi and then Hassan al-Turabi. During the North-South civil war, as a largely Muslim area, Darfur supported the North and some militias from Darfur formed raiding parties to attack villages in Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. However, Darfur's leaders counted for little in the long North-South negotiations which finally led to a peace and power-sharing accord in January 2005. Wealth from the oil fields, largely situated on the edge of the North-South dividing line had been a prime motivation for the peace agreement. Wealth and development programs were to give a new life to the South and to the government in the North. Ironically, it was the North-South peace negotiations which set the stage for the Darfur revolt. In 2000, Darfur's political leadership had met to draw up a 'Black Book' which detailed the region's systematic under-representation in national government since independence. The 'Black Book' marked the start of a rapprochement between the Islamists and the secular radicals of Darfur which took form three years later with the rise of the more secular Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Islamist-leaning Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). However, at the level of the central government, the 'Black Book' led to no steps to increase the political and economic position of Darfur. This lack of reaction convinced some in Darfur that only violent action would bring recognition and compromise as the war in the South had done. In July 2002, the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed a framework protocol for peace in Machakos, Kenya. It seemed that peace was at hand. Therefore, if Darfur was to share in the potential new prosperity, armed violence to gain attention had to be undertaken soon. The two Darfur groups, SLA and JEM, started to structure themselves, gather weapons and men. The idea was to strike in a spectacular way which would lead the government to take notice and to start wealth-sharing negotiations. Not having read the 'Little Red Book' of Mao, they did not envisage a long drawn out conflict of the countryside against the towns of Darfur. By February 2003, the two groups were prepared to act, and in one night attacked and destroyed many of Sudan's military planes based at El Fasher. The Sudan military lost in one night more planes than it had in 20 years of war against the South. However, the central government's 'security elite' battle hardened from its fight against the South but knowing that the regular army was over-extended and tired of fighting decided to use against Darfur techniques that it had used with some success against the South: to arm and to give free reign to militias and other irregular forces. Thus the government armed and directed existing armed groups in Darfur popular defence forces and existing tribal militias. The government also started pulling together a fluid and shadowy group, now called the Janjaweed ("the evildoers on horseback"). To the extent that the make up of the Janjaweed is known, it seems to be a collection of bandits, of Chadians who had used Darfur as a safe haven for the long-lasting insurgencies in Chad, remains of Libya's Islamic Forces which had once been under the control of the Libyan government but left wandering when Libyan policy changed, probably some daytime police and military - the Janjaweed acting nearly always at night - and some traditional nomad leaders from Darfur. The central government gave these groups guns, uniforms, equipment, and indications where to attack by first bombing villages but no regular pay. Thus the militias had to pay themselves by looting homes, crops, livestock, by taking slaves and raping women and girls. Village after village were destroyed on the pretext that some in the village supported either the SLA or the JEM; crops were burned; water wells filled with sand. As many people as possible fled to Chad or to areas thought safer in Darfur. As the then acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Dr Bertrand Ramcharan stressed " First, there is a reign of terror in this area; second, there is a scorched-earth policy; third, there is repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity; and fourth, this is taking place before our very eyes." The United Nations set up an International Commission of Inquiry which confirmed the worst fears of the deliberately destructive nature of the conflict whose consequences are to destroy a way of life. The Commission of Inquiry as well as the UN Commission on Human Rights has recommended that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity be tried by the International Criminal Court. This will be the first major test of the new court and thus will be important to watch and analyse. Darfur represents a classic case of how violence gets out of control and goes beyond the aims for which it was first used. For the moment, it is hard to see how the violence can be reduced. The African Union has sent in military observers to oversee a non-functioning ceasefire. Talks between the government of Sudan and the JEM and SLA leadership in the Nigerian capital Abuja have broken down. The Sudanese government has honed its survivalist instincts for a long time ably playing its 'Arab' character for support within the Arab League and its 'African' role within the African Union. There is little external support for the JEM and SLA. However, they have been able to get arms on the international 'grey market'. It is not clear to what extent the central government can control or disarm as the UN has requested - the Janjaweed even if they wanted to. Some have recommended that a United Nations-led force replace the African Union observers who have been ill equipped and poorly led. The Sudanese government has resisted such a replacement policy. There should be, in any case, an increased cooperation and mutual support between the UN system and the African Union. There are splits in the JEM and SLA insurgencies which make negotiations with the government of Sudan all the more difficult. The interests of many people in Darfur are not represented by either the government or the insurgencies, but it is nearly impossible for other voices to be heard. At this stage, we need to build awareness and try to establish contacts with moderate individuals and groups in Sudan to see the possibilities of concerted action. Rene Wadlow is editor of the online journal of world politics www.transnational-perspectives.org and the representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens. Formerly, he was professor and Director of Research of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva. Home Page | AWC Goals | AWC Branches | Archives Resolution 2010 | Human Manifesto | AWC History United Nations | AWC Staff | Join Online Today | Worldometers Contact Us |