Darfur crisis

This article deals with a current or ongoing event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

The Darfur conflict is an ongoing (as of 2004) conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan between the Janjaweed, a Sudanese-government-supported armed militia recruited from local Arab tribes, and the black African peoples of the region. The conflict has been widely described as "ethnic cleansing", and not infrequently as "genocide". As of July 2004, an estimated 50,000–80,000 people had already been killed or starved, and more than 1.2 million people displaced from their homes. 200,000 have fled to neighboring Chad.

Origins of the conflict

Darfur is inhabited by a variety of peoples, generally constituting two distinct groups: black African peoples such as the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa, and Arab tribes collectively termed Baggara, who settled the region from about the 13th century onwards. Both groups are Muslims. However, relations between the two groups have long been tense; the precolonial Fur kingdom regularly clashed with the Baggara, particularly the Rizeigat. Moreover, before the 20th century (and by some accounts well into it) Darfur was a centre of the slave trade, and Fur slavers competed with Arab ones to raid the nearby Bahr el Ghazal to obtain slaves for the coastal regions. The two groups also have differing economic needs, which has led to clashes: the Fur and Masalit are primarily sedentary farmers, while the Arabs and Zaghawa are nomadic herdsmen, which has brought them into conflict over access to land and water resources.

The government of Sudan has had a strongly Arab character since the country's independence in 1956; it has been a military dictatorship since 1958. A civil war between the Muslim government and the mostly non-Muslim African population of the southern Sudan broke out in 1962 and continued, with a break between 1972 and 1983, until a ceasefire was declared in 2002. Peace talks in 2003 produced an agreement under which state revenues — oil money in particular — would be shared between the government and the southern rebel groups.

The agreement did not, however, satisfy Darfur campaigners' demands for a fairer deal for the region's population. Two local rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLA) — accused the government of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. Fur and Masalit, while the JEM is associated with the Zaghawa of the northern half of this province.

Course of the conflict

The conflict began in early 2003 when JEM and SLA rebels attacked government forces and installations. The government, caught by surprise, had very few troops in the region, and — since a large proportion of the Sudanese soldiers were of Darfur origin — distrusted many of its own units; its response was to mount a campaign of aerial bombardment supporting ground attacks by an Arab militia, the Janjaweed, recruited from local tribes and armed by the government. While the conflict has a political basis, it has also acquired an ethnic dimension in which civilians were deliberately targeted on the basis of their ethnicity, and an economic dimension related to the competition between pastoralists (generally Arab) and farmers (generally non-Arab) for land and water. A United Nations observer team reported that non-Arab villages were singled out while Arab villages were left untouched:

Early 2004

The 23 Fur villages in the Shattaya Administrative Unit have been completely depopulated, looted and burnt to the ground (the team observed several such sites driving through the area for two days). Meanwhile, dotted alongside these charred locations are unharmed, populated and functioning Arab settlements. In some locations, the distance between a destroyed Fur village and an Arab village is less than 500 meters. (UN Interagency Report cited below, 25 April 2004)

The Janjaweed are also said to have "torched dozens of mosques and torn up and defecated on copies of the Koran." (The Economist, May 15 2004).

Both sides have been accused of committing serious human rights violations, including mass killing, looting, and rapes of the civilian population. However, the better-armed Janjaweed quickly gained the upper hand. By the spring of 2004, several thousand people — mostly from the non-Arab population — had been killed and as many as a million more had been driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis in the region. The crisis took on an international dimension when over 100,000 refugees poured into neighbouring Chad, pursued by Janjaweed militiamen, who clashed with Chadian government forces along the border. More than 70 militiamen and 10 Chadian soldiers were killed in one gun battle in April.

The scale of the crisis has led to warnings of an imminent disaster, with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warning that the risk of genocide is "frighteningly real" in Darfur. The scale of the Janjaweed campaign has led to comparisons with the Rwandan Genocide, a parallel hotly denied by the Sudanese government. Independent observers have noted that the tactics are more akin to the ethnic cleansing used in the Yugoslav Wars but have warned that the region's remoteness means that hundreds of thousands are effectively cut off from aid. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group has reported that over 350,000 people could potentially die as a result of starvation and disease.

July 2004

In early July 2004, Annan and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Sudan and the Darfur region, and urged the Sudanese government to stop supporting the Janjaweed militias. Annan described the trips as "constructive".

The African Union and European Union have sent monitors (as of 5 July 2004) to monitor the cease-fire signed on 8 April 2004; however, the Janjaweed's attacks have not stopped, as noted by the United States and more recently Human Rights Watch.

On 23 July, 2004, the United States Senate and House of Representatives passed a joint resolution declaring the armed conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur to be genocide and calling on the Bush administration to lead an international effort to put a stop to it.

On 30 July, the United Nations gave the Sudanese government 30 days to disarm and bring to justice the Janjaweed; if this deadline is not met, it "expresses its intention to consider" sanctions. The Arab League has asked for a longer term and warns that Sudan must not become another Iraq.

From the Sudanese government's point of view, the conflict is simply a skirmish. The Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, said, "The international concern over Darfur is actually a targeting of the Islamic state in Sudan." Sudan has warned Britain and the United States not to interfere in the internal affairs of the East African country saying it will reject any military aid, while asking for logistic support.

August 2004

In August 2004, the African Union sent 150 Rwandan troops in to protect the ceasefire monitors; however, "their mandate did not include the protection of civilians." Rwandan President Paul Kagame declared that "if it was established that the civilians are in danger then our forces will certainly intervene and use force to protect civilians"; however, such an effort would certainly take more than 150 troops. They may be joined by 150 Nigerian troops later this month.

Peace talks, which had previously broken down in Addis Ababa on July 17, were resumed on August 23 in Abuja. The talks reopened amid acrimony, with the SLA accusing the government of breaking promises that it made for the little-respected ceasefire signed in N'Djamena on April 8.

The UN's 30 day deadline expired on August 29, after which the Secretary General reported on the state of the conflict. According to him, the situation "has resulted in some improvements on the ground but remains limited overall". In particular, he notes that the Janjaweed militias remain armed and continue to attack civilians (contrary to Resolution 1556), and militia disarmament has been limited to a "planned" 30% reduction in one particular militia, the September 9, 2004, US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared to the US Senate that genocide was occurring in Darfur, for which he blamed the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed. This position was strongly rejected by the Sudanese foreign affairs minister, Najib Abdul Wahab. The United Nations, like the African Union and European Union, have not declared the Darfur conflict to be an act of genocide. If it does constitute an act of genocide, international law is considered to allow other countries to intervene.

Also on September 9, 2004, the US put forward a UN draft resolution threatening Sudan with sanctions on its oil industry if it fails to disarm the Janjaweed and accept the expansion of the African Union monitoring force to about 3,000 soldiers.

According to the BBC in July, analysts estimate that at least 15,000 soldiers would be needed to put an end to the conflict.

See also

• History of Sudan, for a broader view of the events that have caused the current conflict