I.

Introduction

Darfur, westernmost region in the Republic of Sudan, covering an area about the size of France. The landscape of Darfur spans sandy desert, grassy savanna, and lofty mountains. The region is home to an ethnic mosaic of people, most of whom are Muslim. The Fur people make up the largest non-Arab group in the region. In Arabic, Darfur means “Land of the Fur.”

Darfur became mired in violence in 2003, when the government of Sudan launched a brutal crackdown on a rebellion in the region. The conflict continued in 2007 despite international mediation efforts. More than 200,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the violence or from starvation and disease. Refugee camps have swelled with more than 2 million displaced people, creating a humanitarian emergency.

II.

The Land and People of Darfur

Darfur covers an area of nearly 500,000 sq km (nearly 200,000 sq mi). It shares its western border with Libya, Chad, and the Central African Republic. From north to south, Darfur straddles the edge of the Sahara desert, reaches across the semiarid Sahel and savanna, and borders forests of Africa’s wet tropical region. In central Darfur the Jebel Marra massif dominates the landscape, rising more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) at its highest peak. The massif receives significantly more rain than other areas of Darfur, and seasonal streams called wadis flow from its heights. Jebel Marra marks the watershed between the Nile Basin (also known as the Sudan Basin) to the east and the Chad Basin to the west.

Depending on definitions, there are between 30 and 90 ethnic groups or tribes in Darfur. Arabs of the Juhayna lineage comprise 40 percent of the population, and the majority of them live in southern Darfur. The main Arab tribes are the Rizeigat, Beni Halba, Habbaniya, Ta’aisha, and Zayadiya. Arab immigration occurred between the 14th and 17th centuries. The largest non-Arab groups are the Fur (about 25 percent of the population), the Masalit (about 12 percent), and the Zaghawa (about 9 percent). These groups have lived in Darfur since ancient times. The region also includes a sizeable population of West African origin, mostly Hausa speaking. Centuries of intermarriage between Arabs and non-Arabs has blurred physical distinctions among the people in Darfur. Nearly all Darfurians are Muslims, and most belong to the Tijaniyya (Tijaniyah) Sufi order. See also Islam; Sufism.

Traditionally, most Darfurians practice mixed livelihoods, including farming and raising livestock. The staple crop is pearl millet (also known as bulrush millet), a type of cereal grass. It is grown during the rainy season from June to September, supplemented by irrigated farming along seasonal rivers and on the slopes of Jebel Marra. Farmers also tend cattle, sheep, and goats. Pastoralists herd camels in the north and cattle in the south, migrating seasonally with their herds. Most non-Arabs are farmers, and many Arabs are pastoralists.

III.

History of Darfur

Both legend and archeological record indicate that states have existed in Darfur from ancient times. From the 11th to 14th centuries it was part of a Zaghawa empire, and Jebel Marra was the locus for kingdoms ruled by the Daju and Tunjur peoples. In the early 17th century, the sultanate of Darfur emerged among the Keira lineage of the Fur-speaking people. Islam was promoted as the official religion. By the late 18th century Darfur had grown into a multiethnic empire with a complex administration. Its armies reached as far east as the Nile, and it dominated the trans-Saharan trade with Egypt.

In 1874 a Turko-Egyptian mercenary army conquered the Darfur sultanate. By 1885, however, a Sudanese rebellion led by Muhammad Ahmad, a religious leader known as the Mahdi, expelled the Egyptians from Sudan and proclaimed the Mahdist state. Darfurians figured prominently in the Mahdist revolt. A Darfurian Arab, Abdullah al-Taashi, succeeded the Mahdi as the caliph (ruler) of Sudan from 1885 to 1898. Those years witnessed massive disruption, bloodshed, and famine in Darfur.

At this time, European countries were engaged in the so-called Scramble for Africa, building colonial empires on the continent through military conquest. Britain, which had occupied Egypt, became focused on defeating the Mahdist state to expand its colonial possessions. In 1898 British forces led by General Horatio H. Kitchener decisively defeated the Mahdists in the Battle of Omdurman, near Khartoum. Uninterested in Darfur, the British initially recognized the Darfur sultanate under Ali Dinar Zakariyya, but subsequently deposed him in 1916. Darfur was officially incorporated into Sudan, which was under the joint sovereignty of Britain and Egypt.

Darfur was a backwater of colonial Sudan, as it was geographically isolated from the capital of Khartoum. The British ruled Sudan indirectly through a “native administration” system, involving tribal leaders in local governance. Under this system Darfur was neglected and had the poorest health care, schools, and infrastructure of any part of Sudan. This situation continued after Sudan gained independence in 1956, despite the fact that Darfur provided about 20 percent of Sudan’s electorate. Attempts to build a unified Darfurian political platform were repeatedly thwarted by ethnic and political divisions among Darfurian leaders. Distinct Arab and non-Arab (“African”) blocs emerged in the 1980s.

A.

Emergence of the Janjaweed

A civil war in neighboring Chad spilled over into Darfur in the 1980s. A Chadian warlord militia sponsored by Libya retreated into Darfur at the end of the decade, after the Chadians drove Libyan forces out of Chad. This Chadian militia formed an alliance with Darfurian Arabs who were impoverished by a severe drought. A shortage of water and arable land had led to increasing conflict between the nomadic Arabs, who used the land for grazing livestock, and the settled non-Arabs, who used it primarily for farming. The well-armed Arab alliance, which became known as Janjaweed (or Jingaweit), launched attacks and raids on farming communities. Those communities developed militias of their own in response.

B.

Rebellion and War

Successive governments in Khartoum failed to address poverty, drought, and resulting famine in Darfur. The growing conflict over limited resources in Darfur heightened grievances over the government’s longstanding neglect of the region. During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, discontent grew as the government failed to provide basic security for villagers, while backing Arab militias and their agenda of local land-grabbing. Several localized but fierce wars were fought in Darfur.

From 1999 to 2002 three events combined to spark a wider war. First, there was a split in Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, with many Darfurians going into opposition. Second, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a rebel group that had been fighting a war against the government in southern Sudan since 1983, dispatched arms and military advisers to rebels in Darfur, helping them mount an effective insurgency. Third, Chadian army officers began clandestinely assisting the Darfur resistance.

Two allied rebel groups emerged in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The SLA had grown from a coalition of anti-Janjaweed local defense groups, with distinct Zaghawa and Fur factions, and an educated leadership with national aspirations. The JEM had its origins in Sudan’s Islamist movement and was led by non-Arab Islamists who had been purged from the government of Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The Darfurian rebels sought the restoration of Darfur as a single autonomous region, reversing the administrative reorganizations of the 1990s that had divided Darfur into three states. They also sought a settlement to many local grievances, especially over land rights.

In February 2003 the SLA launched attacks on government military garrisons in the Jebel Marra massif of central Darfur. Khartoum responded with a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign. In two massive offensives in 2003 and 2004, government-led forces halted the military threat posed by the rebellion. In the process they inflicted immense violence on the civilian population, targeting communities that were believed to harbor or support rebels.

The spearhead of the counterinsurgency campaign was the Janjaweed militia, which brutally attacked non-Arab communities in Darfur. Well-armed Janjaweed fighters, riding in small bands on camels or horses, pillaged and burned entire villages and massacred inhabitants. Janjaweed operations were well coordinated and synchronized with air force bombings. This pattern followed the government’s long-established strategy of using militias in the civil war in southern Sudan from 1983 to 2004. Official denials of government sponsorship of the Janjaweed carried little weight.

C.

Search for Peace

Chad led the first efforts at mediating the Darfur conflict. The resulting cease-fire agreements, reached in September 2003 and April 2004, were signed but soon disregarded. Under the latter agreement, the African Union (AU) deployed peacekeeping troops to Darfur with a limited mandate to observe the cease-fire. Khartoum promised to disarm the Janjaweed but ultimately failed to do so. The AU mission, which eventually included 7,000 troops, proved unable to control the violence. The government of Sudan resisted international pressure to allow United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces in Darfur.

The AU also took over the mediation process and convened peace talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. The talks resulted in a detailed peace agreement being placed before the Sudanese government and Darfurian rebel groups in May 2006. The SLA had splintered into various factions, and only one faction signed the peace agreement with Khartoum. Subsequently, a new round of escalated fighting broke out in Darfur. Efforts to obtain a cease-fire and further peace talks continued into 2007.

In June 2007 the Sudanese government agreed to a joint UN-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur. AU officials hailed the agreement as a breakthrough, but other observers cautioned that the government had reneged on previous agreements. Sudan reportedly insisted that a majority of the peacekeeping forces be made up of African soldiers. In July the UN Security Council authorized the creation of a 26,000-member peacekeeping force to be deployed in Darfur. The United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) launched at the beginning of 2008, but by March only 9,000 of its personnel had been deployed in the region.

D.

Casualties of the War

According to a UN estimate, at least 200,000 people have died in the Darfur conflict. Some estimates put the death toll closer to 400,000. Civilians have accounted for the majority of casualties as victims of violence, starvation, and disease.

More than 2 million Darfurians have been displaced from their homes. They have sought refuge in desolate makeshift camps in Darfur or across the border in Chad. With one-third of the entire population of Darfur living in overcrowded refugee camps, the conflict poses a dire humanitarian emergency. Refugees rely almost entirely on international relief efforts for their survival. However, the Sudanese government has placed tight controls on the activity of relief workers. In addition, the pervasive lack of safety in rural areas has severely restricted access to many needy communities.

The civilian population suffered atrocities such as the destruction of entire villages, the slaughter of inhabitants, the widespread rape of women, and the contamination of water wells. In 2004 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned the atrocities perpetrated by the government and Janjaweed in Darfur as genocide. In 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) began an investigation into war crimes committed in Darfur by both sides. In April 2007 the ICC issued warrants against two Sudanese men, one a member of the government, on charges of war crimes. However, Sudan is not a signatory to the ICC, and the government refused to hand over the two men.