The Skivvy on Sudan

Published March 27, 2007

By Max C. Bookman

Do you really know what’s going on over there in Darfur? There’s a lot of information out there and it can all be very confusing, so here’s the most comprehensive guide to Darfur you’ll get.

* Sudan – A Muslim country in northeast Africa, just South of Egypt. Arabs and African ethnic groups live in Sudan. Its modern history has been plagued by two civil wars, the second of which only recently ended.
* Omar al-Bashir – The authoritarian ruler of Sudan who came to power in a military coup years ago.
* Darfur – A poor and rural region of western Sudan with few natural resources.
* Darfuris – People who live in Darfur. They are not an ethnic group (just like Californians are not an ethnic group). Instead, many ethnicities live in Darfur including Muslim non-Arabs such as the Fur, Massaleit, Zagharva, along with Muslim Arabs. Darfuris have been economically and politically marginalized for years.
* SLA – Sudan Liberation Army. A largely decentralized militia that emerged from Darfur with the broad aim of overthrowing the al-Bashir regime. Is now factionalized and defunct. The largest of the factions of the SLA aim to completely separate Darfur from the rest of Sudan.
* Janjaweed – Generally Muslim Arabs (although some dispute that). Once semi-nomadic herders, the Janjaweed were heavily armed by the Sudanese government to fight the SLA, and they now lead the way in conducting countless atrocities in Darfur. Read on to see how that came about.
What is the Darfur Conflict in a nutshell?
At the turn of the 20th century Great Britain controlled parts of Northern Africa including Egypt, Sudan, and Darfur. Darfur was never historically part of Sudan, but in 1916, the Brits incorporated the region into Sudan anyway. Britain focused its resources on Egypt and urban parts of Sudan, leaving Darfur terribly underdeveloped. When the seasonal rains failed to come in 1983 and 1984, Darfur’s centuries-old agricultural economy collapsed, famine ensued, and Sudan did nothing to help.
Why would Darfuris support a government that has no historical connection to them, politically and economically marginalizes them, and allows countless numbers of their people to die in a famine? Well, they didn’t.
In 2003, the SLA took the lead in attacking the Sudanese military’s al-Fashir garrison, causing unprecedented death and damage. The attack took the military by surprise. In the engagements that followed, they suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the rebels.

By 2004, President Omar al-Bashir needed a new strategy. He turned to the Janjaweed for help. The Janjaweed were far more effective at engaging the factionalized SLA than the Sudanese military, and al-Bashir made sure that they were heavily armed. The tide quickly turned, and soon after, the Janjaweed grew out of control, killing thousands and displacing a million by spring ’04.

Since then, the situation in Darfur has only grown worse. The SLA has splintered into numerous factions. While Arab villages are relatively left alone, the Janjaweed continue to raid defenseless non-Arab villages, killing men and boys, publicly raping women and girls, and burning crops. The actual numbers are unknown, but millions have been displaced and countless more have been killed.
So is it genocide?
While it seems that the mainly Arab Janjaweed paramilitary’s attacks on non-Arab villages would warrant genocide, the Western dialogue is bogged down in debates over nomenclature.
While the United States has declared a genocide in Darfur, it has failed to act. The UN has not declared the situation a genocide, and does virtually nothing. The strongest international force there is a mainly nonmilitary African Union regiment of 7,000.
Because the situation is not as clear cut as say, Nazis killing Jews, many important people in the West are looking the other way. Genocide or not, there are horrific government-sanctioned human rights violations occurring in Darfur, and the powers that can stop it do nothing.
We have already failed.
What Darfur needs is a strong international military response. That has simply failed to materialize because of America’s other priorities in Iraq and Afghanistan, Europe’s reluctance to ever commit to a military solution, and the oil-rich Arab world’s indifference to anything but their own interests.
With no navigable bodies of water and a rainy season that floods many roads, Darfur is one of Africa’s most inaccessible regions. This has made it next to impossible for humanitarian efforts to get food and supplies to the region’s hunger-struck villages.
These humanitarian programs are seriously under funded and seriously insecure, often falling victim to Janjaweed attacks. The Sudanese government often blocks humanitarian missions to non-Arab villages. These conditions have forced humanitarian programs to either drastically cut down their operations or pull out altogether.
As of now, 6,000 of the 2 million displaced people in refugee camps die every month. The rainy season approaches, bringing flooding and diseases such as malaria with it. Along with the pullout of humanitarian aid, conservative estimates see the death toll jumping to 100,000 refugees a month. At that rate, the entire 2 million Darfuri refugees would be dead in less than two years.
Couple that with the systematic killing of civilians, destruction of villages, plus the burning of agriculture, and a bleak picture of the future of Darfur emerges. Anything less than an immediate military and humanitarian aid operation, and there won’t be any Darfur conflict to speak of in the next decade because there won’t be any Darfuris.

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