Darfur: An Overview of a Humanitarian Crisis

By Sue Hayes. Written in February of 2006

One of today’s gravest human rights and humanitarian crises is in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, an area roughly the size of California.  Under the pretext of suppressing an internal rebellion, soldiers and the Sudanese-government backed Janjaweed militias have committed crimes against humanity involving civilians. Human Rights Watch has documented massacres, executions of civilians – including women and children- acts of sexual violence, the burning of towns and villages and the forced displacement of an estimated 2.4 million people. According to the United Nations, as many as 180,000 people may have died since the beginning of the conflict in February 2003. What lies at the bottom of this tragedy?

In early 2003, an armed conflict began between an alliance of the Sudanese government forces and ethnic Arab militia and two non-Arab rebel groups called the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Instead of fighting the rebels, the government forces have waged a relentless campaign against unarmed civilians belonging to the same ethnic groups as the rebel groups – mainly the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa.  Ethnically, Arabs make up 39% and Africans 61% of the population. Religiously, Muslins make up 70% of the population and the rest are Christians and traditional believers. The central government has been dominated by Arabs and Muslims since the country’s independence in 1956. Dozens of ethnic groups inhabit Darfur, groups of Arab and African ethnicity who have lived peacefully side by side in the past. The majority is non-Arabic farmers of African origin. Among them, the largest ethnic group is the Fur. The Arab groups have complained of political marginalization by the Fur. The Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa complain of political marginalization by the Sudanese government. Since the current government took power through a military coup in 1989, it has changed administrative systems and taken other measures that are perceived to be supporting the political and economic cause of the Arab ethnic groups.  Interestingly, there is no religious conflict. Almost all Darfurians are Muslims.  There have been incidents, however, of government forces and Arab militias desecrating mosques, killing imams and others seeking refuge inside mosques and desecrating the Koran while attacking Africans. An obvious question at this point must be what role economics plays in this crisis.

Darfur is a very poor region almost entirely dedicated to subsistence agriculture and livestock herding for domestic and export purposes. The settled Fur and other African population have farmed the most fertile parts of central Darfur for generations, usually producing a surplus. Northern Darfur is an area impacted by the Sahara. For years, mostly Arab nomads from this area – who take their livestock from the dry north to better water and grazing lands in the south every dry season – have been moving into southern Darfur earlier and earlier.  This has brought them into conflict with the farmers, whose crops have been trampled on and consumed by the herd of camels and cattle. Some of the African communities resorted to self-defense groups in the 1990s to protect their crops, homes and families from increasing incursions by the Arab camel-or horse-mounted raiders, many of whom have also been armed over the past decades. While ethnic tensions have certainly increased in Darfur due to the current conflict; this is a result of the government’s political and military policy of manipulating ethnicity and using ethnic militias to fight the rebels.

The most prominent of these militias is the Janjaweed, an Arab militia in Darfur. They are not drawn from all Arab groups in Darfur. Some Arab ethnicities have deliberately stayed out of the fight against the rebels and against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa civilians. The militia members are mostly from the most impoverished nomadic Arab ethnic groups in Darfur and Chad. Several of their leaders have criminal records on account of past attacks on farming communities.  The Term Janjaweed has been used in the past to refer to bandits on the margins of society. Now the government has recruited and armed an estimated 20,000 Janjaweed militia.  While the government in Khartoum has repeatedly denied and rejected accusations of collusion to commit genocide, it is clear that the Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed have conducted coordinated attacks which have resulted in systematic destruction of hundreds of villages. Spokespersons from a variety of organizations, from the United Nations to Human Rights Watch, have called for a “robust international response” which has not been forthcoming and which, if it had, would have been soundly rejected by the Sudanese government.  However, some things point clearly to the collusion between Khartoum and the Janjaweed. 

The Janjaweed wear green khaki uniforms similar or identical to those of the Sudanese government army. The Janjaweed officers arrive at the scene of an attack in army Land Cruisers. Usually, the only way the civilians under attack can tell the Janjaweed and army apart is that the Janjaweed attack on horses or camels. They use satellite phone issued by the government and they have offices in the main government-controlled towns and government-provided barracks. They are also paid and recruited by the government in Khartoum.   President Omar El Bashir announced, in December of 2003, that “Our top priority will be the annihilation of the rebellion and any outlaw who carries arms.” (Human Rights Watch) Those words predated the offensive that has used systematic force in violation of international humanitarian law to drive hundreds of thousands of people from rural areas. The U.N. estimates that of those, over 150,000 have fled to refugee camps in Chad, which is in no way prepared for such a huge influx of desperate people. They also estimate that there are an additional one million who are still in Darfur who are affected because displaced kinsmen staying with them have stretched and depleted their resources, bringing the number of victims of government sponsored brutality and violence to over two million. Are all voices within Sudan silenced except to express complicity?

It is only fair to say that there have been those who have spoken up within the higher echelons of the Sudanese power structure. High-level insiders from the armed forces have repeatedly complained about the brutal attacks on civilians for the last two years. Instead of taking action to prevent or punish the abuses, the Sudanese government continues to implement the same strategy of “ethnic cleansing”. Even without those specific warning about the continuing volatility of the situation, the leadership of Sudan has had more than a dozen years of experience of the dangers of using ethnic militias. Their strategy of using ethnic militias in offensive military operations during the long war in southern Sudan provided ample evidence that such forces invariably targeted civilians and committed other war crimes. Numerous attacks on the civilian population in southern Sudan wrought massive death and destruction, including several man-made famines resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese as recently as 1998. Some observers, after 1998, believed that the Sudanese government would be reluctant to use such tactics against a northern, Muslim, population. The Darfur campaign proves that this was not the case. Sudanese leaders, including President El Bashir, deliberately implemented a strategy of “ethnic cleansing” led by government-backed militia forces such as the Janjaweed. Members of the targeted ethnic groups – the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa – believe that the government is waging a campaign to resettle the lands of the African population in Darfur with Arabs. . It appears that the current government fears that the Darfur conflict poses a threat to its continuance in office.  The Sudanese government buys military supplies from several countries, including China and Russia. Government revenues have increased substantially since it began exporting oil in 1999. To some, it seems obvious that oil exportation lies at the bottom of the Sudanese government’s attitude toward the ethnic African population.   Even though it is abundantly clear that massive abuses have taken place, the government not only has done nothing to prevent further crimes or punish the offenders, they continue to deny the scale of the atrocities and flatly reject the description of “genocide” in connection with the continuing brutality. Although the government and the rebel groups agreed to a humanitarian ceasefire on April 8, 2004, this has not stopped the violence. Government forces continue to bomb on occasion and the Janjaweed militias continue to attack villages of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. In addition, the Janjaweed terrorize displaced civilians even after they have fled into government-controlled areas. The government of Sudan must be forced to disarm and dismantle these groups, arrest those responsible for abuses and return the others to their place of origin. This can occur sooner rather than later, but the United Nations must be allowed to play a key role.

Currently, there are approximately 6,500 UN peacekeeping troops, working with 7,000 African Union troops in war-ravaged Darfur.  However, the violence continues and there are now growing fears of a military clash between Sudan and its neighbor to the west, Chad, where several hundred thousand refugees from Darfur are living in camps. On

February 17, in a speech in Orlando, Florida, President Bush called for doubling the number of international troops in the Darfur region and for a bigger role for NATO in the peacekeeping effort.  After talks with world leaders, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, President Bush has asked for a “more muscular military response” to intervene in the bloody conflict. Many details of the policy shift need to be worked out, including how many U.S. troops would be part of the expanded international peace-keeping effort.  Military and NATO collaboration notwithstanding, there is also serious need for humanitarian aid.

 In the past, the Sudanese government deliberately frustrated the international relief community by erecting elaborate schemes of regulations that choked off relief, resulting in the deaths of approximately 300,000 Darfurians.  At this time, more than a million people require urgent humanitarian assistance – health care, nutritional support, shelter, clean water and, above all, protection from continuing attacks.  In the long term, ethnic

reconciliation, compensation and justice will be essential, as well as agreement on access to land.  There must be impartial administration of justice. When the abusers are investigated and punished for their attacks on civilians and civilian property, the violence will be stopped. Darfur needs the world’s urgent attention.

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