Since the crisis in Darfur reached the international media several weeks ago, words like “ethnic cleansing,” “Arabs,” “blacks,” “Africans,” and even “genocide” have dominated the coverage.
At an “easy level” it is an ethnic struggle, according to Martin Doornbos, a retired professor of East African politics at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Holland. But he stressed that the situation is “very complex” and groups in Sudan’s western region cannot be divided along ethnic lines.
The conflict, thus, is essentially one of more powerful groups trying to kick others off the land – and not necessarily ethnic cleansing. When serious violence and eviction of villagers from their homes get mixed in though – as is the case in Darfur now – land and ethnicity “can get connected,” and land feuds start becoming more like ethnic cleansing.
Unlike in Sudan as a whole, almost all Darfur natives are Muslim. The differences, Doornbos explained, arise in skin color and “degrees of religious adherence.”
Thus, the word “African” and “black” are misnomers. Rather, the distinction is between skin shade (black or blacker), he said. The people being referred to as Arabs have lighter skin and generally adhere to a more fundamental, “militant” stream of Islam, which was imported to Darfur from the northern and central part of the country. They also speak Arabic, while the non-Arabs speak a variety of local languages.
Dornboos explained that the militias responsible for killing up to 50,000 people and sending more than a million Sudanese into exile in neighboring Chad recently are a hodgepodge force of Arabs both from Darfur and from the center and north of the country.
Sudan is the largest and one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Africa. Similarly, it has had little respite from internal strife since gaining independence from British colonialists in 1956.
The Darfur region has always been distinct from the rest of Sudan, especially under the current, centralized government. Formerly an independent state, it was joined to Sudan in 1916 under British rule.
The recent violence in Darfur began in the spring of 2003, when Darfur “rebel groups” attacked a Sudanese army position to protest their lack of autonomy, demanding, among other things, greater shares in the country’s oil revenues.
The representative groups are the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement. Both allegedly originate in the south. To further illustrate how blurred ethnic groups are, some of their members have Arabic names.
This conflict is also linked to the twenty-year civil war between the Arab, Islamist state and non-Muslim populations in the south. The sides recently reached a truce.
Because the Sudanese government focused so much on the conflict with the south, the land crisis in Darfur was “seriously” neglected, Dornboos said.
Furthermore, in the late 1990s, following a drought that obliterated Darfur, many natives were forced into the center of the country, which aggravated the internal conflict. Locally, the issue of land became even more complex, as ownership became very unclear.
The Arab militias in Darfur are widely believed to be backed by the government.
“One interpretation is that some of the militias were used by the regime to raise terror and havoc in the south,” Dornboos said. “With the agreement, they had to be redirected and were let off on the Darfur rebels.”
Other sources claim that Africans have long been killing Sudanese Arabs in land disputes, alluding to deep-rooted hatred.
Another explanation is that the government armed Arabs in Darfur to protect them against the main opposition group in the south, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The government “doesn’t see itself as a national government but as a group in power, in competition with other groups…based on feelings that anyone out there is a potential adversary,” Dornboos explained. “There is little sense in the Sudanese government that they are responsible for the whole. That is one of the root causes of the conflict.”
Thus, in the negotiations between the government and the SPLA, Darfur was excluded, possibly a move by the government to limit its opposition, said Dornboos. The exclusion was accentuated when oil came into the equation. “Darfur doesn’t have anything to share,” Dornboos explained.
Under the threat of U.N. sanctions, Khartoum has been forced to stop the militias by August 30 or face external intervention.
As a result, Dornboos said, the government has made promises that they are not keen on keeping. Sending in the army to confront the militias, he said, “could lead to an unexpected defeat.”
The government, in all likelihood, will concoct a “face-saving” strategy to force the militias underground – a move which “would make the rest of the world happy and not get themselves in trouble with their own militias.”
Unfortunately, Dornboos continued, this means that the militias will probably resurface at some later date.