GENOCIDE IN DARFUR
A History of Marginalization
Prior to 1917, Darfur was an independent region and a wealthy trade center with economic ties to the Mediterranean basin. The region, about the size of Spain, hosts multiple ethnic and tribal groups who have coexisted for hundreds of years. Each of these groups copes with the challenges of desert life through either a primarily pastoral or agricultural lifestyle.
Darfur was integrated into Sudan in 1917. Since then, Darfur has been and ignored in the national government. The region receives poor economic and development assistance and lacks large-scale businesses. This underdevelopment, combined with increasing desertification in the region, has left agriculturalists and pastoralists with limited economic opportunities, competing with each other for land and water in an increasingly fragile and hostile environment.
What causes the hostility amongst the people of Darfur?
Stepping Stones to Conflict
As competition for economic resources caused rivalries between the different ethnic groups, nomads, militias and weapons from Chad and Libya began to pour into Darfur to support and power the Arab Darfurians. Traditional peaceful measures were no longer able to settle disputes over crops and grazing land, leading to increasing militarization in the region. The complexities of desertification, famines, and the civil war raging between North and South Sudan contributed to a rise in regional tensions during the 1980s.
As the civil war between the North and the South peaked in the 1990's, the government ignored rising violence in Darfur. While the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the North-South War in 2003 and granted additional political power to South Sudan, it failed to account for the effects of the war on Darfur. Additionally, Darfur remained underdeveloped and ignored at the federal level. This neglect, combined with beleif that the government was providing weapons to Arab tribesmen to raid non-Arab villages, was the reason why villagers in Darfur launched an uprising against the Khartoum (Sudan’s capital) government.
What else besides famines, desertification, and land disputes caused tension in the Darfur region?
Why did the peace treaty not stop the violence in the Darfur region?
Dynamics of the Ongoing Genocide
In response to the uprising against the Khartoum government, the government responded with a scorched-earth campaign. This campaign destroys villages by burning them to the ground. The government has also been accused of supporting a militia recruited from local Arab tribes to carry out the scorched-earth campaign. These militias came to be known as the Janjaweed, loosely translated as the "devil on horseback." Janjaweed raiders engage in mass terror of villages, murdering and displacing non-combatants, looting and burning food stocks, and enslaving and raping women and children. The Janjaweed are accompanied by the Sudanese Air Force. The air force has been bombing rebel villages and providing air support for mounted Janjaweed attacks on civilians.
This conflict is often characterized as a clash between Arab and non-Arab ethnicities residing in Darfur; however, this part of the conflict is very unclear. The conflict is rooted in the fact that the Darfurians problems were being ignored as well as deep ethnic tensions. So, it is hard to say if the conflict is a civil war or a genocide.
Who are the Janjaweed?
What techniques do they use?
IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS
Refugee: A person who leaves his or her country when threatened by unsafe living conditions, typically brought on by violence or by natural disaster. There are approximately 250,000 refugees from the Darfur region, most of them living in Chad.
Internally displaced person (IDP): A person who is forced to relocate within his or her own country when threatened by unsafe living conditions, typically brought on by violence or by natural disaster. Approximately 2.2 million IDPs have been created by the violence in Darfur. Most of these people are living in camps and surviving on humanitarian aid provided by over 75 nonprofit organizations, such as the United Nations World Food Programme. In the case of Darfur, the Sudanese government has make it difficult for food and other aid to reach IDPs by blocking the entry of humanitarian workers and by contributing to attacks on convoys carrying humanitarian aid.