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Sudan Civil War
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Fighting between two main opposition groups -- the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) -- the Government of Sudan (GOS) military, and GOS-supported militia groups collectively known as Jingaweit intensified in the three states of Darfur, the western region of Sudan, during late 2003. Insecurity has steadily increased since the Darfur-based opposition SLM/A attacked GOS military forces at El Fasher, North Darfur, on April 24 and 25, 2003. The humanitarian emergency in Darfur is a direct result of violence toward the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massalit civilian groups by GOS forces and the Jingaweit. Conflict-affected populations describe recurrent and systematic attacks against towns and villages, burning of buildings and crops, arbitrary killings, gang rape, and looting. The GOS has used aerial bombardments to terrorize civilians who the GOS claims are harboring SLM/A or JEM forces.
The main cause of this conflict is the widespread feeling of being consistently socio-economically marginalized and the sense of being left out of the peace negotiations particularly in the context of self-determination and power sharing.
Darfur
region is located in the western part of the Sudan. It is bordered by
Libya in the North, Chad in the West and the Central African Republic
in the South West. Kordofan and Bahr El-Gazal regions border the
eastern and the southern parts of Darfur respectively. The estimated
population of Darfur is around 4 million, approximately 60% of whom are
subsistence farmers.
The major ethnic group is the Fur, hence the name Darfur [Dar = abode, darfur = abode of the Fur]. The rest are either nomadic or semi-nomadic herders. The majority of farmers live close to subsistence level. There are some small traders and local merchants, but their economic impact is insignificant.
The Fur, largely peasant farmers, occupy the central belt of the region, including the Jebel Marra massif. Also in this central zone are the non-Arab Masalit, Berti, Bargu, Bergid, Tama and Tunjur peoples, who are all sedentary farmers. The northernmost zone is Dar Zaghawa, part of the Libyan Sahara, and inhabited by camel nomads: principally the Zaghawa and Bedeyat, who are non-Arab in origin, and the Arab Mahariya, Irayqat, Mahamid and Beni Hussein. Cattle rather than camels are herded by the Arab nomads of the eastern and southern zone of Darfur, who comprise the Rezeigat, Habbaniya, Beni Halba, Taaisha and Maaliyya.
Historically, North Darfur and parts of West and South Darfur have suffered recurrent droughts. Crop yields have remained low and unpredictable due to erratic rainfall, pest infestation and the lack of agricultural inputs. The livestock has also dwindled due to pasture and water scarcity. The local labor force has continued to migrate in search of employment leaving behind children, women and the elderly. A combination of these factors over several years has systematically eroded the coping capacities of communities.
Darfur [Darfour, Dar Fur ] was an independent Muslim sultanate, the Kingdom of Darfur. While the Mahdist revolution of the nineteenth century attempted to create an Islamic state, the Mahdi's rule (and that of his successor Khalifa Abdullahi) faced armed resistence from the remnants of the Fur Sultanate. The Fur were never fully subjected to the strict Islamic rule of the Mahdist state. In the area of procedural law, Darfur's Sultans adopted Islamic law. In other areas the Sultanate remained firmly a sacral state based on Fur ethnicity.
According to tradition Islam was introduced, about the 14th century, by Tunjur Arabs, who reached Darfur by way of Bornu and Wadai. The first Tunjur king was Ahmed-el-Makur, who married the daughter of the last Tago monarch. Ahmed reduced many unruly chiefs to submission, and under him the country prospered. His great-grandson, the sultan Dali, a celebrated figure in Darfur histories, was on his mothers side a For, and thus was effected a union between the negro and Arab races. Dali divided the country into provinces, and established a penal code, which, under the title of Kitab Dali or Dalis Book, is still preserved, and shows principles essentially different from those of the Koran.
His grandson Soleiman (usually distinguished by the Forian epithet Solon, the Arab or the Red) reigned from 1596 to 1637, and was a great warrior and a devoted Mahommedan. Soleimans grandson, Ahmed Bahr (1682-1722), made Islam the religion of the state, and increased the prosperity of the country by encouragingimmigration from Bornu and Bagirmi. His rule extended east of the Nile as far as the banks of the Atbara. Under succeeding monarchs the country, involved in wars with Sennar and Wadai, declined in importance.
Towards the end of the 18th century a sultan named Mahommed Terab led an army against the Funj, but got no further than Omdurman. Here he was stopped by the Nile, and found no means of getting his army across the river. Unwilling to give up his project, Terab remained at Omdurman for months. He was poisoned by his wife at the instigation of disaffected chiefs, and the army returned to Darfur.
The next monarch was Abd-er-Rahman, surnamed el-Raschid or the Just. It was during his reign that Napoleon Bonaparte was campaigning in Egypt; and in I799 Abd-er-Rahman wrote to congratulate the French general on his defeat of the Mamelukes. To this Bonaparte replied by asking the sultan to send him by the next caravan 2000 black slaves upwards of sixteen years old, strong and vigorous. To Abd-er-Rahman likewise is due the situation of the Fasher, or royal township. The capital had formerly been at a place called Kobb.
Mahommed-el-Fadhl, his son, was for some time under the control of an energetic eunuch, Mahommed Kurra, but he ultimately made himself independent, and his reign lasted till 1839, when he died of leprosy. He devoted himself largely to the subjection of the semi-independent Arab tribes who lived in the country, notably the Rezeigat [Rizighat], thousands of whom he slew. In 1821 he lost the province of Kordofan, which in that year was conquered by the Egyptians. Of his forty sons, the third, Mahommed Hassin, was appointed his successor.
Hassin is described as a religious but avaricious man. In the later part of his reign he became involved in trouble with the Arab slave raiders who had seized the Bahr-el-Ghazal, looked upon by the Darfurians as their especial slave preserve. The Bahr-el-Ghazal paid tribute of ivory and slaves to Darfur, and these were the chief articles of merchandise sold by the Darfurians to the Egyptian traders along the Arbamn. road to Assiut. The loss of the Bahr-el-Ghazal caused therefore much annoyance to the people of Darfur.
Hassin died in 1873, blind and advanced in years, and the succession passed to his youngest son Ibrahim, who soon found himself engaged in a conflict with Zobeir, the chief of the Bahr-el-Ghazal slave traders, and with an Egyptian force from Khartum. The war resulted in the destruction of the kingdom. Ibrahim was slain in battle in the autumn of 1874, and his uncle Hassab Alla, who sought to maintain the independence of his country, was captured in 1875 by the troops of the khedive, and removed to Cairo with his family.
The Darfurians were restive under Egyptian rule. Various revolts were suppressed, but in 1879 General Gordon (then governor-general of the Sudan) suggested the reinstatement of the ancient royal family. This was not done, and in 1881 Slatin Bey (Sir Rudolf von Slatin) was made governor of the province. Slatin defended the province against the forces of the Mahdi, who were led by a Rizighat sheik named Madibbo, but was obliged to surrender (December 1883), and Darfur was incorporated in the Mahdi's dominions. The Darfurians found Dervish rule as irksome as that of the Egyptians had been, and a state of almost constant warfare ended in the gradual retirement of the Dervishes from Darfur.
Following the overthrow of the khalifa at Omdurman in 1898 the new (Anglo-Egyptian) Sudan government recognized (1899) Ali Dinar, a grandson of Mahommed-elFadhi, as sultan of Darfur, on the payment by that chief of an annual tribute. Under Ali Dinar, who during the Mahdia had been kept a prisoner in Omdurman, Darfur enjoyed a period of peace. The internal administration of the country was in the hands of the sultan, who was officially recognized as the agent of the Sudan government.
The sultan attempted to expel the foreign colonizers during World War I, but his forces were defeated. In 1916 the British expelled the Sultan and incorporated the sultanate into Sudan, whose government is now dominated by Muslim Arabs.
Darfur is in one of the poorest regions of Sudan. Even in normal circumstances, the region is hard to reach because it is so far from the capital, Khartoum. Darfur is a poor area that has long been neglected by the central government. It has been a theater for tribal confrontations and attacks launched by armed gangs, but without the emergence of an armed political movement. Armed raids on rich agricultural areas and skirmishes with rival groups are part of the historical way of life for the nomadic herders.
A military agreement was concluded between Libya and Sudan in 1985 after the government of Jaafar al Numayri was overthrown by a group less hostile to Libya. Libya pledged to supply a quantity of trucks, trailers, and spares for Soviet equipment already in the Sudanese inventory. In return, the Libyans reportedly were permitted to set up a base in the western region of Darfur where several hundred Libyan troops joined with Chadian insurgents fighting to topple the Chadian government.
Tribal and ethnic conflicts are neither new nor uncommon. Incidents of both small and large scale conflicts are recorded as far back as 1939 and they generally arise from disputes over access to natural resources like range lands and water points as well as livestock trespassing (grazing on farm lands), closure of herd routes and cattle raiding. Larger conflicts normally emerge from tribal disputes, banditry and disputes with transnational migrating communities. The influx of modern small arms since the war in Chad has increased the loss of life during such conflicts and caused polarization on ethnic lines.
The pattern of conflict changed from low-intensity, small-scale outbreaks from the 1950s to the 1970s, to high-intensity, persistent and large-scale battles in the mid-1980s. The prolonged drought that began in 1983 drove nomadic Zaghawa and Arab groups southwards into the central Fur region of Jebel Marra. By the time of the 1989 peace conference, an estimated 5,000 Fur and 400 Arabs had been killed; tens of thousands had been displaced and 40,000 homes destroyed.
In 1990, Chadian President Idris Deby toppled his predecessor Hissein Habre in a coup. Deby, a Zaghawa, was given support and sanctuary by the Zaghawans – one of Darfur’s main ethnic groups - on the Sudanese side of the border.
Over five dozen people from the Four tribe were arrested and detained during July and August 2002, from the towns of Zalingei, Tour, and Nyartati and Golou in Jebel Mara province. None of the 66 people had been formally charged, but the Government has stated that those arrested are suspected of working to form an opposition group calling themselves the ‘Darfour Liberation Front’. Darfour had experienced a marked increase in levels of tribal conflict, with at least 65 people, all from the African tribes, confirmed killed in attacks by Arab militia since May 2002. Hundreds of houses had also been destroyed and thousands of livestock lost.
The government of Sudan maintains that conflict in this region of Darfour is primarily a tribal one, centred around the competition for land between pastoralists and crop farmers in the area. However, leaders of the Four tribe insist that the depopulation of villages and consequent changes in land ownership are part of a government strategy to change the whole demography of the region of Darfour.
By early
2003 exiled Sudanese rights activists claimed that the conflict in
Western Sudan's Darfur region wass developing from ethnic cleansing
into genocide. The Khartoum government allegedly supports Arab militias
in their massacre of Fur and other indigenous people termed "slaves".
Khartoum however claims its neutrality and says it is fighting
"banditry" in Darfur.
The United Nations estimates that up to 600-thousand people have been displaced by the conflict since February 2003. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes since fighting broke out in April 2003 between the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and government forces. The situation of women and children is particularly desperate.
Rebels in Darfour who emerged in February 2003 under the name of Darfour Liberation Front. The Darfour liberation army announced no connection with the southern rebels, but it called in the mid of March 2003 for "an understanding " with the opposition forces which fight the Islamist government in Khartoum. In March 2003 the Darfour Liberation Front announced it had downed a helicopter that was carrying an official in the province. On 14 March 2003 Darfur Liberation Front announced that the movement will be called the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLM/SLA). The Darfur Liberation Front was a secessionist organisation calling for the secession of the area from Sudan. The SLA, led by Mini Arkoi Minawi, says it wants to "create a united, democratic Sudan."
The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) continued to mount attacks in Darfur in April 2003. In response, the Government of Sudan [GOS] stepped up its military presence in Darfur, and according to some reports, has begun attacking local villages in an effort to stamp out the insurgency. Sudan's border area with Chad was declared a military zone by the GOS following a meeting between Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir and Chadian President Idriss Deby. On 25 April 2003, the SLM/A reported that it had seized the airport and Al-Fasher, the capital of Northern Darfur state, and destroyed GOS helicopters and equipment. The GOS refuted this claim, stating that Al-Fashar remained under government control. The authorities in the capital of Southern Darfur, Nyala, imposed a curfew on the city following the clashes in Al-Fashar.
The SLM/A issued statements that it does not seek independence, but demands greater political autonomy and a more equitable share of resources from the central Sudanese authorities. The GOS disputes the SLM/A's claims to be a political organization, labeling the rebels "bandits and armed gangs."
The Sudan Liberation Army began battling an Arab militia called Janjawid [Janjaweed, meaning "a man with a horse and a gun"] as well as government troops in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The Janjawid have been pushing local farming communities off their land in a bid to have access to the resources. Critics accuse the Sudanese government of manipulating traditional ethnic tensions and pursuing a policy of "Arabisation" in Darfur, in order to maintain a support base there. The government has denied backing the Arab militia and said it wants to bring them under control. The Sudanese government strongly denies backing the militias. It says it has urged all tribes in Darfur to “defend” themselves against rebels in the region.
Reports indicate more than 600,000 civilians have been internally displaced, 75,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Chad, and as many as 3,000 unarmed civilians have been killed. Many more have been prevented from planting or harvesting crops. Humanitarian access continues to be inhibited by ongoing insecurity and the Government of Sudan's denial of travel permits to humanitarian workers.
The on-going conflict in Darfur should be included in the Sudanese peace talks and may threaten the success of the talks if the situation is not dealt with.
In November 2003 The United Nations called for nearly 23-million dollars to help people suffering in a little-known war in western Sudan.
In December 2003 nearly 10,000 new Sudanese refugees fled into Chad from the strife-torn Darfur region of the Sudan. There were reports of killings, rape and the burning and looting of entire villages. The peace talks on Darfur resumed 10 December 2003 in Abeche, eastern Chad. A UN World Food Programme (WFP) assessment mission to south Darfur found that 46 of the 62 villages had been completely burned, while the other 16 had been looted. The newest refugees, who brought the number to have fled across the Chadian-Sudanese border over the previous seven months to 75,000, alleged that there has been aerial bombardment of villages and "ethnic cleansing" by pro-government Arab militias.
The government has denied all humanitarian agencies access, so UNICEF and other UN agencies are complaining to the government about this. UNICEF fears that the acute malnutrition among children less than five-years-old will increase dramatically due to a lack of food, due to displacement, due to lack of access from humanitarian agencies, and also, already very poor sanitary conditions and access to safe water.
The authorities might be embarrassed that fierce fighting is going on in this remote corner of Sudan at a time when a peace deal ending 25 years of civil war is almost concluded. Hostilities in Darfur between indigenous opposition groups and the Sudanese Armed Forces and its allied militias have caused non-governmental organizations and the UN to curtail needed humanitarian assistance programs.
While the situation in Darfur continued to deteriorate, thousands of people, mainly women and children, are continuing to flee for safety to eastern Chad. The 75,000 Sudanese refugees began fleeing to Chad in April 2003 to escape the spiraling conflict in the region.
This is an invisible emergency that does not get a lot of attention around the world, but it is something of extreme concern. UNHCR is concerned about security along Chad's eastern border with Sudan, and planned to begin relocating the Sudanese refugees from that area to sites deeper inside Chad.
On 09 April 2004 the Sudanese government and two rebel movements in Darfur agreed to a 45-day ceasefire to allow humanitarian assistance to reach several hundred thousand people affected by the fighting. Chadian government mediators persuaded the Sudanese government and representatives of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) to agree to the truce. The deal includes an agreement to release prisoners of war and other detainees arrested as a result of the 14-month-old conflict, to stop laying mines and committing acts of sabotage and had pledged allow the free movement of people and goods.
On 17 May 2004 the leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdel Wahed Mohammad Ahmad Nour, said his group would expand its fighting into the central Sudanese area of Kordofan, the capital, Khartoum, and areas in the east, if the group is not represented at the long-running Sudanese peace talks currently taking place in Kenya.
Although the US-brokered agreement nominally provided for a cease-fire and humanitarian access to Darfur, attacks by the "Jinjaweit" militiamen -- who have been accused of ethnic-cleansing tactics against black African villagers -- continued and refugees still flowed across the border into Chad. As many as a million people had been made homeless in the western Sudanese region.
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