Understanding the Genocide Politically: the case of Darfur
By Amir Idris
September 9, 2005 — Much of the debate on root causes of political violence in the Sudan has focused on the ethnic and “tribal” structure of the society. Sadly, Sudan has often been perceived as “out of history”. Its political violence seems to have no history and no politics, and hence is unthinkable. I begin my comment first by raising the following historical questions related to this subject. Is the Sudan really divided into two regions with two different racial and religious compositions? What do African and Arab mean in the Sudanese context? Are they racial, cultural, or political identities? Do they have history and politics?
Neither culture nor race is at the heart of the current violent conflict in Darfur. Rather it is the racialized state that transformed cultural identities into political identities through the practice of slavery in the pre-colonial period, indirect rule during the colonial period, and state exclusive policy of citizenship in the postcolonial period.
The Darfur conflict began early in 2003, when two armed movements, Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) began a rebellion against government policies that have marginalized the Darfur region. Unlike the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), both movements do not demand self determination. Instead, they seek equitable development, land rights, social and public services, democracy and regional autonomy.
In response to the rebellion, the Islamized and Arabized government in Khartoum mobilized and armed a militia group, known as Janjaweed, employing killing, burning villages and farms, raping women, and starvation as strategies to defeat the rebel groups. The violence in Darfur has led to the killing of more than 300, 000 and displacement of over 2 million civilians. The UN has described the situation in Darfur as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”; the US Congress and the State Dept. described it as genocide.
The conflict has indeed exemplified the simplicity of the view that often casts the Sudan’s conflict in terms of south versus north or African against Arab. The crisis in Darfur has also revealed the inability of the north-south paradigm in explaining the root causes of the conflict.
Very often the recent political violence in Darfur is perceived as a war between Arabs and black/African Muslims. Some went further to claim that the African are farmers, while Arab tribes are nomadic herders. This view certainly misrepresents the reality of the conflict. The conflict in my view is in fact a manifestation of the national crisis that has ravaged the country for decades. The root causes of the conflict have a long history and politics associated with the process of state formation and its impacts on the politics of identity in the Sudan. This national crisis first erupted in the south in 1955, when the first phase of the civil war began.
When the conflict erupted in Darfur in 2003, many in the western media and commentators on the Sudanese affairs were either caught by surprise or were unable to make sense of the violence. On the one hand, in the minds of those who always assert the religious factor in the Sudan’s civil war, the conflict in Darfur is incomprehensible. After all, the people of Darfur are devoted Muslims, and presumably belong to the larger Muslim world. However, the brutality of the violence that was inflicted on Muslims of Darfur forced one commentator to ask, “If Muslim countries claim to worry so much about the fate of Muslims in other places, why do they do absolutely nothing when the black Muslims of Darfur die at the hand of Arab Muslim”.
On the other hand, in the minds of those who tend often to perceive the conflict in racial terms, African versus Arab, the Darfur crisis is unthinkable because the people of Darfur are known as Arab in the context of the north -south conflict. In both minds history and politics has been removed from the context of the conflict. Sadly, in the mind of the killers and the victims, the conflict in Darfur is also presented as a war between Arab and Black African Muslims. In both cases, the racial categories Arab and African are taken for granted. The role of the state in creating and enforcing them as political identities has been ignored. Instead, the warring groups in Darfur have used these categories to advance their political goals in the context of competing histories and identities. For the killers- the government and the armed militias- the term Arab enables them to mobilize their people along a perceived racial line by creating an environment of fear among the Arab groups. For the victims- rebel groups and innocent civilians from non Arab groups- the term African or black makes their case not only acceptable to the western world, but also enables them to forge a sense of solidarity under a political identity in opposition to Arab identity.
This is in fact not to deny the existence of both terms Arab and African in the local context prior to the recent violence in the region. However, these terms African and Arab are produced through long historical and political processes in which the state has been an active participant. Of course, neither race, nor culture is at the center of the current Sudan’s crisis. Instead, it is the racialized postcolonial state that imposed a single vision of nation through the policy of Arabization and Islamization. The social and the cultural history of Darfur has shown that the process of periodical migrations and the cultural practice of intermarriages between various cultural communities has created flexible cultural and social identities that have blurred racial, cultural, and religious boundaries in the past. The labels of Arab and African do not fit the social and economic realities of Darfur.
Unlike the people of southern Sudan, many people of Darfur, despite of their non Arab origin, have embraced an Arab identity in the past. Although they share the same history of oppression, marginalization, and injustices, they thought of embracing Arabism as a way to distance themselves from southern Sudanese who have been stigmatized by the legacy of slavery. In the context of the Sudan, origin rather than religion determines the identity of the person. For example, being non Arab and Muslim does not give the people of Darfur equal status with their fellow Arab Muslims in central Sudan. As in the case of the southern Sudanese, those converted to Islam were not fully accepted into the society. They were not treated by the Arabized and Islamized state as citizens with social and political rights. The recent violent attacks against some non Arab Muslim groups such as the Fur, the Zaghawa, and the Massaleit in the western region of Darfur prove that conversion to Islam couldn’t fully compensate for the absence of an Arab origin in the Sudan.
Of course, the politization of religion and racialization of cultural differences predictably led to tension and the spread of violence in the region. The tension between the various ethnic groups in Darfur has also been aggravated by the competition over scarce natural resources and environmental changes that have affected the region since the 1980s. Conflicts over natural resources become bloodier and much more destructive when guns become easily available. However, the political violence in Darfur become unmanageable when the government through its Arabized and Islamized policies began to arm, train, and support Arabic speaking cattle nomads in the 1980s. In the beginning, the government’s plan was to use the armed militia against the northern Dinka in an attempt to combat the SPLA’s activities in the area. In its attacks against the northern Dinka, thousands were shot, tortured, killed, or mutilated. Others mainly women and children were taken as slaves.
The racialization of the conflict, however, has grown rapidly since the Islamist regime of Omer al Bashir came to power by a military coup in 1989. Bashir’s regime has attempted to impose the Arab and Islamic identity on all the people of the Sudan including the Muslim people of Darfur through its policy of Jihad- holy war. In the violence that has engulfed the region since early 2003, race has become a cruel reality. In fact, the violence that is unfolding in Darfur is the same violence that has happened in southern Sudan for the last 20 years. Of course, there is one difference between the war in the south and the war in Darfur. It is true that people of Darfur unlike those of the south, are Muslim. And not just Muslim: deeply, devoutly, unshakably Muslim. Although the people of Darfur are Muslims, they have been subjected to discrimination and racism.
Neither of the two wars in the south, nor the current conflict in Darfur are aberrations. Instead, these wars should be viewed as the logical results of a state dominated from its inception by the interest of an Islamized and Arabized group. The form of the state that was created during the pre-colonial period, and consolidated and institutionalized its policies during the colonial and the postcolonial periods, laid the seeds of the current political violence. The process of state formation in the Sudan was/ is a violent process. Discrimination, displacement and slavery were strategies used by the state to quell opposition. The legacies of slavery and colonialism have contributed to the inventions of two categories of people with different entitlements. Those who are considered Arabs by the racialized state are treated as citizens and those who are perceived as non Arabs are treated as subjects.
What should be done?
The vicious conflict in the western region of Darfur demonstrates the complexity of the Sudan’s tragedy. The peace negotiations between the Government of Sudan (GOS) and the SPLA/M, however, have focused on outstanding north-south conflicts over identity, power and wealth sharing, and the future of the three contested regions. But the north-south conflict is only one of the many regional conflicts that have devastated Sudan. Furthermore, political parties within and outside the NDA have contested the SPLA/M and the Sudan government’s monopoly of peace negotiations, labeling them as non democratic in their handling of issues pertinent to the future of the whole country.
The UN, the AU and the United States have to treat the Government of Sudan as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The international community also has to recognize the fact that the AU mission is understaffed, poorly finance, and ill-equipped to cope with the scale of the crisis in Darfur. Indeed, faced with a deepening crisis of the postcolonial state and the growing discontentment in the eastern and western regions, only a de-racialized democratic regime can be expected to confront the grievances that gave rise to war in the south and are producing conflict in other parts of the country, particularly in Darfur. Given these realities, any attempt to end the political violence in the Sudan has to confront the existing racialized and Islamicized state. A regime change is a precondition for any meaningful democratic transformation in the Sudan. Furthermore, if the international community and the Sudanese political forces, in particular the SPLA/M and the GOS continue to ignore these historical and political realities and view the peace process merely in terms of north and south, Arab and African, then it is predictable that the Sudan’s crisis will deepen and violence will continue.
– Amir Idris, Assistant Professor of African Studies, Dept. of African & African American Studies, Fordham University, New York City