THE HISTORY OF CONFLICT IN SUDAN
November 5, 2007
Thirty civilians were killed. Of these thirty, many were men who had their throats slit while attempting to pray in a mosque. Untold numbers of women were raped; some were even taken into slavery. Most tragically perhaps, a five-year-old boy was shot in the back of the head. A massacre? Yes, but part of a much larger conflict.
The aforementioned events happened in early October of this year yet they barely made the news. Since the early 2000's genocide has officially been occurring in the Darfur (western) region of Sudan, the largest country in Africa, located just south of Egypt. Estimates of the number of people who have lost their lives due to the conflict range from 200,000 to 450,000 (the current UN estimate). No one can be certain. It is estimated that some 2.5 million people have been forced to leave their homes and flee to neighboring villages, or more often to Chad, which lies along Sudan's western border. Many people around the world have heard about Darfur and many have even heard these startling statistics, but why is the conflict happening and more importantly, what, if anything, is being done about it.
The history of Sudan is riddled with complexities that few understand. Sudan, as few people know, is the largest country in Africa. It is about the size of the US from the Mississippi River east; the Darfur region alone is about the size of Texas. Within this vast nation there are approximately 40 million people who belong to an estimated 600 different ethnic groups speaking over 400 languages. In 1956, Sudan gained its independence from Britain. A year before it gained said independence Sudan's first civil war began and lasted till 1972. This war was between the Arab, Islamic North and the Black African, Christian and animist South. In 1983, after just over 10 years of relative peace, war returned to the Sudan. This war though fought over similar issues was far bloodier than the first. An estimated 2 million people lost their lives of which it is estimated that nearly 80% were civilians primarily in the south. Some 4 million more were estimated to be displaced in neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya. Many of these people have still not returned home even though the war was officially ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. There is simply little if anything for them to return to: their families are dead or missing, their livestock slaughtered and their villages burned.
In 2003 while peace talks were taking place between the North and the South, conflicts in Darfur escalated to an unprecedented level. A horrible famine had caused tensions between the nomadic and farming people who co-inhabited the region to intensify in the 1980's and the government refused to help or offer food aid to the starving farmers. Omar al-Bashir was the president of Sudan at that time (and still is). He was originally given the position in order to be a puppet for Hassan al-Tarabi a well known sponsor of extremist Islamic movements. Al-Bashir decided he wanted to have real control of the government and in a bloodless coup, took power and in effect banished al-Tarabi. Al-Tarabi fled to Darfur where he began to gain support for an uprising against the government. He befriended members of the Fur tribe in order to fight back against al-Bashir. Al-Bashir became nervous and in turn decided to slowly arm the Arab nomadic tribes in order to squash any potential for rebellion. The government began by giving arms to these nomadic tribes, and then began to back up these herders, collectively referred to as the janjaweed, with air support from the Sudanese military.
That brings us to today. The fighting in Darfur continues and scenes as described above and many much worse are far too familiar to the Fur people and other tribes living in the region. The conflict is further complicated as the tensions between the North and South become heated once again. Early this year, fighting between different groups within the janjaweed began to intensify as well. This change only serves to increase the bloodshed. The conflict continues and little is being done internationally. The UN has spent the past year and a half passing resolutions that would require a UN peacekeeping force ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 troops comprised primarily of Africans. This has lead to little real action since China has veto power on the Security Council and has too large of economic stakes in Sudan to risk upsetting Khartoum. Recently UN Security Council Resolution 1778 which required a large peacekeeping troop be sent to Sudan. Though there is hope that this resolution will come through, Khartoum tends to agree initially to let troops in but in the end decides against it. Since the UN cannot enter a country without permission (otherwise they would be breaking national sovereignty) nothing can be done if Khartoum says no. Thus the only peace keeping troops presently are a small group of poorly armed African Union (AU) forces primarily from Rwanda (who have all too strong of a connection with genocide in Africa).