Peace in the South is the cause of the war in the West
Broken on the old battlelines drawn in the Saharan sands
Richard Dowden, The Guardian
June 8, 2004 — Just as the world began to breathe a sigh of relief that almost half a century of war between the north and south of Sudan seemed to be coming to an end a new and horrible war appears to have begun in the west.
Peace is partly the cause.
Political power and oil money are being divided between the northern Islamic government in Khartoum and the leaders of the non-Islamic peoples of the black south.
Under intense US pressure Khartoum has been forced to sign an agreement that will create a power-sharing government and a partly integrated army, split the oil revenues and, after six years of autonomy, allow the South to hold a referendum on self-determination and independence.
But huge areas of the country are left out, and the message they have understood is that to get a seat at this dinner party and eat the spoils you need to have an army and guns.
These were already plentiful in Darfur province, thanks to decades of low level warfare rooted in the struggle between the cattle-keeping peoples of the Sahara and its southern fringe and the settled black African farmers of the river valleys further south.
Neglect has stirred resentment, moreover. Under British rule Darfur was as much overlooked as other “non productive” parts of the country. The oversight continued after independence in 1956.
The only division in Sudan visible to outsiders is the racial, cultural and religious divide between north and south. But there is a deeper division between the Khartoum elite and the rest of the country, which it has governed by neglect and division: a game that is now bearing poisonous fruit.
The Khartoum elite is Arabic-speaking and Muslim but the importance of Islam to it has varied and in recent years there has been a struggle for power between Islamist elements and more secular Arab tendencies.
They have been united in their war against the southerners, who are neither Arabised nor Muslim, but divided on Darfur which, though never Arabised, is Muslim.
The Islamist element in Khartoum has reached out to Muslims in other parts of Sudan and made them allies.
In Darfur Muslim African peoples saw their chance to end oppression and neglect and formed the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army.
The more Arab, anti-Islamist groups in Khartoum, which are now in power, backed the militias descended from the earlier cattle-herding Muslim rulers, such as the Janjaweed, in Darfur.
Both sides see a chance to grab what they can before the peace agreement between north and south solidifies Sudanese power politics for decades.
The Janjaweed are supported by the army high command and encouraged to indulge their traditional raids on their southern neighbours for cattle and women.
But now the raids are preceded by helicopter gunships and villages are razed, the inhabitants murdered, irrigation systems smashed and crops and granaries burned.
This is ethnic cleansing, possibly genocide.
But many army officers and senior figures in Khartoum come from Darfur, some from the groups being victimised.
The split goes right to the heart of the Arab Muslim divide. That is why the Americans and other outsiders do not want to put more pressure on Khartoum at the moment.
If the government has to denounce and turn on its own allies in Darfur its fragile unity could fall apart, the last thing that the north-south peace agreement needs at the moment.