Restless Beings

Unfortunately, ethnic conflict is nothing new in Darfur. Darfur, one of the largest states in Sudan, is home to a multitude of different ethnic groups and tribes, but is largely split between two main ethnic groups: those that claim Black ‘African’ heritage and those who claim ‘Arab’ heritage. These groups cohabited the region relatively harmoniously but scarcity of resources and most significantly, government interference, exacerbated their tensions.

The region lies in the western district of Sudan; it has historically been one of the more remote districts and is difficult to get to even in normal circumstances. Yet this distance has not prevented or protected Darfur from being at the centre of national interests, and the number one target for government aggression.

The severity of the present humanitarian situation was not produced as a consequence of the current conflict, but is the product of decades of government sponsored violence and corruption. Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Today, at 10 million, it has the largest internally displaced population in the world with 24.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

As such, to fully understand the current state of affairs in Sudan, we need to go back two decades to the 2003 War in Darfur- where the instruments of the current conflict were forged and where this genocide finds its roots.

But first, what is the fault line?

The political class of Sudan have historically been pro-Arab and therefore anti-African, and this is evidenced in their political bias against South Sudanese populations and their violent bias in Darfur. To offset the growing movement for South Sudanese independence, the dictatorships of Sudan created Arab militias to reign down terror and violence on African villages. Across Darfur, the landscape was similar where Arab militias were targeting African villages. As a result, counter insurgencies by African self-defence groups began to fight the Arab militia. Their resistance was used by the Al Bashir Sudanese dictatorship to justify the Darfur Genocide of 2003. Thus, the 2003 Genocide in Darfur can be viewed as the violent culmination of decades long repression and neglect by the Sudanese government against the people of Darfur.

Timeline of Events:

Feb, 2003: Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) wage war against the government of Sudan, claiming they were fighting against underdevelopment and marginalisation.

• Attacked towns, government facilities and civilians in Darfur.
• Several hundred policemen were murdered and more than eighty police stations were destroyed, leaving a security vacuum.

April, 2003: Government finally responds after JEM and the SLA conduct a joint raid on the Sudanese air base at Al-Fāshir.

• Mirroring its response to the conflict in the South, they arm and equip Arab militias.
• These manifested into the Janjaweed (JJW)- an organised counter insurgency force of Arabs, armed by the government to quell the uprising.
• The JJW pillaged villages, mutilating, raping and kidnapping inhabitants.

January, 2004 – The Sudanese army gets involved in quelling the uprising; hundreds of thousands of refugees flee to neighbouring Chad.

March, 2004: The government response to the uprising is described as ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the international community of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawar peoples (African ethnic groups).

April, 2004: SLA, JEM and the Sudanese government agree on ceasefire.

July, 2004: The US House of Representatives passed a resolution labelling the violence in Darfur as a Genocide, however the Bush administration and global community still hesitated. British, EU and Canadian officials all avoided the term.

September, 2004: 6 months into the conflict- President Bush finally acknowledged a genocide was taking place in Sudan during an address to the UN general assembly.

March, 2005: UN Security Council authorises sanctions against those who violate ceasefire in Darfur.

21 years later in August, 2020, a peace agreement was signed between the Sudanese authorities and rebel factions. But by no means does this mean the hostilities towards the Darfuris completely ended, attacks still occurred and the dire humanitarian situation continued.

And this brings us back to present day

4 years after the peace agreement and 21 years after the beginning of the initial war… here we are again.

Government corruption continued to riddle Sudan, and in 2018 civil protests broke out again during a significantly bad economic crisis. A coup in 2019 and a brief period of hope ensued before the country plummeted into its current turmoil. To put it most simply, it is a power struggle between two tyrants- Hemedti, leader of the aforementioned JJW, and Abdel Fattah Burhan, leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces. This is the same duo responsible for ousting former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and triggering one of the biggest revolutions in Sudan's history. But the partnership dissolved, the relationship soured and they now fight each other over control of Sudan. And where exactly has this struggle reached its culmination? Any guesses? Darfur. Once again.

What was allowed and enabled in the 2003 Darfur conflict, set the pace for what is occurring today. With the JJW evolving into the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), emboldened and empowered by the lack of punishment and accountability for the crimes they committed in Darfur less than a decade ago, they unleash this new wave of violence with inflated contempt.

As of today, the RSF are on the front foot in this battle, current reports show they now occupy most of the central and southern Darfur region and have set their eyes on the north. In their conquest of taking control of Darfur, reports show the RSF using similar tactics as before, specifically targeting civilians from the Masalit ethnic group with an independent investigation by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights finding that massacres against the Massalit amount to genocide. The UN also found a mass grave with ethnic Masalits buried within. In this way we can see the current conflict in Sudan being the reignition of the 2003 war in Darfur. The current Sudanese civil war echoes this history of those in power prioritising their stability and interests at the behest of the civilians with Sudan becoming one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world today.

And the persecution of the Sudanese Africans continues, what was described as the ‘first genocide of the 21st century’ enters its second decade.