The Tragedy of Darfur

The genocide happening in Sudan’s Darfur region could easily rank as one of the most virulent killing campaigns in Africa’s bloodied history. Pro-government Arab militias, the Janjaweed, have already forced more than one million black Africans from their homes and the death toll, human rights groups say, is about to breach the half million figure. The scope of the conflict has spilled into the neighboring Chad, where more than 200,000 refugees have fled in search of the elusive safety that they were denied in their own land.

The factor of brute racism has played a seminal role in inspiring the ongoing saga of bloodshed. About a third of the Sudanese farmers practice animist African religions, a small minority is Christian, and majority of the population is Muslims. But this Muslim majority is considered inferior by the privileged Arab minority that controls the reigns of power in Khartoum. Arabs refer to darker Africans as ‘abeed,’ a particularly offensive term, roughly equivalent in meaning to a ‘slave’.

As is the case with most genocidal conflicts in the world, the list of antipathies razing between the darker Africans and the Arabs has a long history. During the times of the Ottoman Empire, conquerors developed northern Sudan and neglected the more inaccessible south. Even earlier, under Egypt, northern Arabs raided the south for ivory and slaves. To this day slavery remains a powerful emotional issue in the north-south war, as the northern rulers are often accused of kidnapping young Africans and forcing them into military service.

But it was only after the discovery of oil in the region that the war within Sudan turned truly genocidal. As it is arable land and water were a hotly contested resource between nomadic Arabs and African farmers. When oil was discovered by Chevron in 1978, the zone of conflict moved further south. Chevron was forced out of Sudan and Khartoum redrew Sudan’s internal boundaries to seize the oil finds and exclude the south. By this time the accusation was gaining grounds that the government at Khartoum was neglecting the region and oppressing black Africans in favor of Arabs in the state of Darfur.

The situation simmered for some time and finally erupted in March 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) started attacking government forces and installations in the western region of Sudan. In response, the government mounted a campaign of aerial bombardment in support of ground attacks by an Arab militia, the Janjaweed, which it had recruited from local tribes. Since then the government in Khartoum has relentlessly exploited the ancient rivalries, arming the Janjaweed and claiming to the world that it cannot control their predatory tactics.

Without any warning the dreaded Janjaweed descend into a village, often with support from Sudan government helicopters and troops. They immediately go on a killing spree, massacring the able bodied men in the village; sometimes the villagers are castrated and left to bleed to death. Rape has been perfected by the Janjaweed as an effective weapon of war. Women and even young children are raped and taken as sex slaves. Sexual violence is aimed at breaking the will of the local people, humiliating them so that they will abandon their lands and flee. The plight of the Darfur’s refugees is so harsh that it defies imagination.

It is lust for land that is driving the Janjaweed in their murderous mayhem. The Arab tribes covet the land because the land of Darfur is rich with abundant wildlife and plenty of natural resources, most lucrative of which is the oil under the ground. And they will go to any extent to claim it. Mass murders, mutilations, rapes, crops and buildings being burned – these are all part of the Janjaweed tactics. Their attacks continue – even at refugee camps, when women and children venture outside to gather firewood, and when people try to return to their devastated villages and farms.

Today, oil rigs drill on land seized from African farmers. The wellheads are encircled by burned earth and a military that is overwhelmingly Arab maintains a constant vigil to protect against rebel attacks. Many international oil companies pipe the oil to tankers waiting in the Red Sea. According to one estimate the Sudanese regime uses roughly half of the $1,000,000,000 in annual oil revenues to buy weapons to use against the rebels in the south and in Darfur. Thus one of the poorest countries in Africa is locked into an impoverishing cycle of endless violence.

According to one UN estimate around 200,000 of Darfur’s population has perished due to hunger and disease, and another have lost their lives 200,000 in an endless saga of violence.