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The library staff of the African Studies Centre Leiden has compiled this
web dossier to coincide with a public meeting on ‘Darfur and the
international community’ organized on 9 February 2007 by the ASC in
cooperation with the Interfaculty Ethnological Student Debating Club WDO.
Speakers: Jan Pronk, former Special Representative of the UN
Secretary-General in Sudan, and Alex de Waal, Programme Director of the
Social Science Research Council in New York and Director of Justice Africa.
The dossier begins with an introduction by
Prof. Jan Abbink, ASC researcher,
outlining the broad contours of the ongoing conflict in Darfur. This is
followed by a selection of titles dealing with Darfur and
the wider conflict
in Sudan published since 2003 which are available in the ASC library. Each
title links directly to the corresponding record in the library’s
online
catalogue, which provides further details and, in many cases, an abstract.
The dossier concludes with a selection of web resources.
- Introduction
- Bibliography:
Darfur-Sudan
- Selected web resources
Many more items are available online on web sites and in discussion
forums. While largely concerned with current affairs, the number of
publications in the public domain is quite substantial, reflecting the
urgency of the Darfur problem. Further background information is also
available in a previous ASC web dossier on
Conflict in Sudan: the case of Darfur, compiled in September 2004.
For further information, please email us at
asclibrary@ascleiden.nl or phone
+31 (0)71 527 3354.
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Darfur, a former independent state in western Sudan, has been the scene
of acerbic warfare between the Sudanese central government and a number of
insurgent movements since February 2003. These groups are demanding rights
for the local peoples and more state investment in their marginalized
region. At the start of the armed conflict, Darfur, which is the size of
France, had a population of about 6 million (virtually all Muslims) but the
number is significantly lower today due to mass killings, disease, famine
and forced expulsions akin to ethnic cleansing caused by the ‘scorched
earth’ military actions of the government troops and local militias. These
militias, known as the ‘Janjawiid’, have been largely recruited from
Arabized peoples from northern and eastern Darfur. They have also attracted
criminals and adventurers from a wider area stretching from Chad to northern
Cameroon and the Central African Republic. The war has generated insecurity
and caused the wholesale destruction of livelihoods and socio-economic
systems in the Darfur region.
According to some observers, the mass violence against the civilian
population has led to the deaths of about 300,000 to 350,000 people and to
untold cases of abuse, cruelty and oppression. Around 250,000 Darfurians are
currently living in refugee camps in Chad, and another 1.8 million
internally displaced people are in IDP camps in Sudan itself. International
humanitarian relief agencies are having a hard time providing the displaced
with food, medical care and other services. The camps are unsafe and are
regularly besieged by the Janjawiid and other armed criminal groups, and the
international NGO and UN staff are facing regular harassment. The
under-funded and under-equipped African Union peacekeeping forces are a mere
7000 strong and, with a weak mandate, they can do very little to improve
security and establish stability.
The Darfur problem is probably the worst crisis in Africa at the moment,
with international organizations and western governments describing it as
genocide. Darfur has demonstrated the international community’s inability to
protect civilians from systematic abuse by their own national government and
its failure to find a solution that will allow the victims the chance to
rebuild their lives. Several rounds of negotiations have been held between
the government of Sudan and the different insurgent movements, but as yet to
no avail. A persistent pattern is the ill-will, if not bad faith, of the
government, as is evident in the continuous breaching of agreements,
successive ceasefires and preliminary peace deals – such as the April 2006
‘Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed in Abuja, Nigeria, with one of the
three main insurgent movements in Darfur by the Sudanese government and
later also by the rebels. The news of another ceasefire deal in December
2006, brokered by US Senator Bill Richardson, was marked shortly afterwards
by a bombing campaign on local villages by the Sudanese air force.
Even before the current conflict, Darfur was already the scene of violence
when, under the government of the ‘democratically elected’ Prime Minister
Sadiq al-Mahdi, government-sponsored militia forces attacked the African
(i.e. non-Arabic-speaking) populations in southwestern Darfur in 1986-89. In
the ten years prior to 2003, other violent incidents were reported as well
and before that there had been a traditional pattern of tensions between the
more Arabized nomadic populations in Darfur and the region’s sedentary
African peoples, such as the Fur, Daju, Tungur, Zaghawa, Berti and Masalit.
These agriculturalists had seasonally determined conflicts with the pastoral
nomads over the use of water resources, grazing land and agricultural
fields, problems that were slowly aggravated over the past fifty year with
the drying out of traditional pasture lands and increased population
pressure on land. But in contrast to today’s fighting, local people then
used established and accepted frameworks for dealing with conflicts and
compensation for damage. The Sudanese government has seriously disturbed, if
not destroyed, such traditional social mechanisms through its military
intervention, its politicization of the ethnic conflict and its seditious
and divisive power politics, giving the advantage to its armed allies among
the pastoralist Arabized peoples, like the Rizeygat, Abbala, Ta’isha, Humr
and others. It should be noted that these peoples are not united, or even
equally involved in the violence, and indications are that many of them are
now also suffering themselves as a result of the conflict.
The current phase of armed conflict in Darfur began in early 2003 shortly
after the Sudanese government and the SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan
reached a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) after decades of civil war.
The Darfurians – Muslims like the north-central Sudanese – feared
marginalization and exclusion from the division of national resources agreed
upon in the CPA, and started a revolt by targeting military installations
and air fields on 25 February 2003. The government then reacted
disproportionately with massive force, aiming to crush potential insurgency
in the Muslim western fringes of Sudan in order to prevent a repeat of the
scenario in southern Sudan. Darfurians had also been the mainstay of the
civil service and the army of Sudan, and were perceived by the Sudanese
central elites to be a possible threat to the national integrity of the
country. The subsequent four-year war has, however, shown that the ‘national
integrity’ of Sudan is a fiction, and that the country is deeply divided and
held together mainly by force. The oppressive violence of the Sudanese army
and its allied Janjawiid militias has backfired, the war has intensified at
tremendous human cost but rebel forces have held their ground and cannot
easily be defeated. Some have also become embroiled in human rights abuse.
The common people are experiencing unimaginable suffering and no negotiated
settlement is in sight. EU and US efforts to intervene persistently meet a
wall of refusal erected by the Sudanese government, which feels secure with
its new allies (China and Russia, who do not raise the human rights agenda)
and is enjoying its recently found oil wealth, which since 1999 has been
providing huge financial leverage. The rebels do not seem to be inclined to
negotiate or to lay down their arms due to the government record of broken
promises, abuse and military force.
The Darfur war has now spread to the Central African Republic and to Chad,
provoking an armed revolt by Sudan-backed rebels against the Chadian
government. As a last resort, an internationally mediated agreement on
Darfur will have to be reached though the UN and/or the AU, but before this
happens the tragedy will continue to wreak further havoc on the people and
their land.
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Online articles
‘I will
not sign’: Alex de Waal writes about the Darfur peace negotiations
In: London Review of Books, 30 November 2006
Darfur peace agreement: so near, so far, by Alex de Waal
In: Open Democracy, 29 September 2006
The book was closed too soon on peace in Darfur, by Alex de Waal
In: The Guardian, 29 September 2006
Understanding genocide in Darfur: the view from Khartoum, by Eric Reeves
26 January 2007
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article150.html
The African Union’s peacekeeping experience in Darfur, Sudan, by Roba
Sharamo
In: Conflict Trends, no. 3, 2006
Old conflict, new
complex emergency: an analysis of Darfur crisis, western Sudan, by Usman
A. Tar
In: Nordic Journal of African Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, 2006
Darfur in war: the politicization of ethnic identities? by Karin
Willemse
In: ISIM Review, no 15, Spring 2005
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Web links
Darfur Information
Center
Comprehensive source which aims to serve as a gateway for the plethora of
news on Darfur; maintained by Ali B. Ali-Dinar (African Studies Center,
University of Pennsylvania). Links to documents on Darfur history, geography
and development; UN reports; indigenous reports; audio-visual reports;
Sudanese newspapers; and the main news sites.
Crisis in Darfur
Darfur pages of the International Crisis Group (Crisis Group), an
independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization working through
field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly
conflict. News, documents, images,
information on the humanitarian situation.
Crisis in
Darfur
Human Rights Watch pages on Darfur. HRW is working to document and end human
rights abuses in Darfur. Background on the Darfur crisis, recent reports,
photo essays, multimedia.
Darfur Peace & Development Organization
DPDO is non-profit organization committed to promote and restore peace and
sustainable development in Darfur. Latest news, reports (UN, Human Rights
Watch, USAID, African Union, US Congress), activities, projects,
audio-visual media, information about Darfur.
The Darfur
Consortium
Coalition of more than thirty Africa-based and Africa-focused NGOs dedicated
to the working together to promote a just, peaceful and sustainable end to
the ongoing humanitarian and human rights crisis in Darfur. The Consortium
came together in September 2004 as concerned NGOs gathered on the fringes of
the third extraordinary session of the African Commission on Human and
Peoples’ Rights in Pretoria, South Africa. Information on international
involvement in Darfur, statements & reports, members publications.
United Nations Sudan
Information Gateway
Contains, amongst others, UN activities reports, latest news, Darfur
humanitarian profile, and information about the Darfur Joint Assessment
Mission.
Darfur Peace
Agreement
Text of the May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, via United Nations Mission in
Sudan, UNMIS, New York and Khartoum.
Sudan: a nation divided
BBC News pages on Darfur.
Darfur dossier
Volkskrant dossier about Darfur; includes Jan Pronk’s weblog at
www.janpronk.nl
Sudan Research,
Analysis, and Advocacy
This site links to electronically published analytic briefs and advocacy
writings on Sudan by Eric Reeves, professor of English Language and
Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has spent the
past seven years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst. The
writings have been organized chronologically, and include all electronic
publications since the signing of the historic Machakos Protocol (July
2002).
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