Darfur Genocide

Arabs Janjaweed vs. Non-Arab, African Natives

Background: Marginalization of African Fur Farmers

Darfur is about the same size as France and has a population of five million people. There are one million Furs in Darfur, making it the country’s largest indigneous ethnic group. The Zaghawa of northwest Darfur and the Masalits residing in western Darfur are each made up of about 350,000 people.

The African farmers have generally been confined to smaller regions of land than their roaming Arab counterparts. Most of the indigneous Africans occupy the southern region of Darfur while the Arabic herders live closer to the Sahara Desert, within Northern Sudan. Socially, they comprise the lower class of poor townspeople while Arabs are generally more affluent and therefore are less endangered than the vulnerable Africans.

The country of Darfur is also divided into three climate zones, a desert, savannah, and the fertile mountains of the Jebel Marra. The settlers of the Jeel Marra region are known as the Fur people, a settled farming tribe who inspired the country’s name “Darfur.”

Most of Sudan is Sunni Muslim and since Sudan’s independence from Britain, the Sudanese government has explicitly favored Arabic speaking and Islamic nomad tribes within Africa and thus marginalized their indigenous African counterparts including the Christian minorities.

Arabs often refer to the Africans as “Blacks” and describe their languages insultingly as “rutana,” which is intended to signify, both through its coarse sound and definition, “nonsense.”

Desertification forced many nomadic Arab herders to migrate southward, sparking hostility between the two communities as they competed over the scarce land and water resources. Despite civil conflict, the Arabic nomads and African tribes were usually able to resolve their disputes through ‘reconciliation conferences’ convened by elder community leaders. Africans and Arabs often assimilated into each other tribes and inter-marriage was also common, this blurred the hard-line distinction between the ethnic groups.

Eventually, the Sudanese government disturbed this general harmony by imposing pro-Arabic laws concerning any inter-tribe conflict. This has built resentment in the Southern Zaghwaa Tribes.

Sudan is also politically divided into three regions consisting of the Ruling Sudanese government from the North, the rebel forces of the South, and Darfur (Western Sudan.).

The Sudanese government has targeted the African tribes of Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawe for their rebellion efforts or their alleged complicity with partisan rebels of the South. Contrary to the Sudanese government’s accusations of the South’s insurgence, the South was the first party provoked by the government sponsored militias known as “Janjaweed.” The “Janjaweed” translating to “Devil on Horseback,” are the Arab paramilitary forces that were armed by the Sudanese government as early as the mid 1980s. The government trained the Janjaweed forces, thus building their own armed force.

The consequences of Darfur "Scorched-Earth Policy."

Connnecting the Plight of African Farmers & Jewish Suffering in the Holocaust

African natives have an extensive history of facing discrimination at the hands of the Arab government centered in North Sudan. Similar to the conditions that Jews were faced with in their anti-semitic governments, African natives are generally neglected, their communities are not well-kept by their government, they aren't provided with the resources that are made available to their Arabic speaking counterparts.

During the Nazi era, Jews were concentrated into ghettos. Similarly, the African natives were pushed into corners of Sudan that aren't taken over by the roaming Arabs. Where Jews were envied for their financial success, the African natives were engulfed in poverty.

Lastly, the Jews were largely persecuted by Hitler's armed forces, the African natives were terrorized by the government authorized 'suppressors.' Many civilians have noted that the government offensives have often synchronized with the arrival of the Janjaweed into a town. According to this consideration, but the Darfur Genocide and the Holocaust involves the direct collaboration and participation of the government in persecution of the minority victims group.

Arab Janjaweed: The Atrocities Committed under Direct Authorization

The unruly Janjaweed first targeted another African ethnicity called the Dinkas, burning them alive in wagons or murdering them in displaced settlements. Under Sadiq El Mahdi’s government, the paramilitary forces had been given authority as a counterinsurgency force against rebel forces in the South known as Southern People’s Liberation Army (SPLA.)

President Al Bashir rose to power in 1989 through a military coup and promoted Militant Islam, invoking Jihad on South Sudan and other regions that resisted his rule. In 2005, the Sudanese government signed a peace agreement with SPLA and both sides promised to ceasefire. The government ordered the Janjaweed to stop their attacks. When the peace agreements failed to address the socioeconomic concerns of the SPLA, the violence sprouted once again and the ceasefire agreement was nullified.

The Darfur conflict emerged in 2003; According to the Human Right’s Watch, the government launched a joint “scorched-Earth campaign” against civilians that fall under the same ethnicity as members of the rebel organizations called the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army (an expansion of the original Darfur Liberation Front.) The Janjaweed began persecuting the Furs, Masalits, and Zaghawe’s of Darfur, driven by greed for territorial and societal domination.

Civilians that were targeted for living in SLA and JEM territories testify that non-Arab civilians offered to join the government’s militia forces against the insurgency groups, but the government refused.

Civilians also testify that government offenses and Janjaweed attacks are often simultaneously executed.

The rebels see the government’s deliberate strikes as critical hints of the Sudanese government’s growing alignment with Arabs and its contempt for the “threatening presence and second-class [status]” of the non-Arab natives.

Nazis & Janjaweed: A Campaign of Oppression

The Jews were treated as inferior host people in a country that belonged to Aryans. They were viewed as second-class citizens and therefore their freedoms and rights were significantly restricted to reflect their lower class. of the non-Arab natives. African natives, unlike Arabs, are also discriminated against. They generally have access to fewer facilities and of poorer quality than those of the Arabs. Learning the Arabic language is generally encouraged, but African language is dismissed as unintelligible and primitive.

The populations of the Jews was significant even though they constituted a minority of the European population. The African natives of Darfur are actually the majority population, but they are overran by the elite Arabs.

The main unifying factor of all acts of genocide is that they were committed by fascist, nazi, authoritarian, autocratic and/or highly militarized regimes. Also, the bulk of the German army was comprised of ordinary German soliders who were ordered to commit heinous crimes against the 'Jewish enemy.' Similarly, the Janjaweed is comprised of Arab civilians who seek territorial gain or are driven by hatred of their African neighbors.

Footnotes:

John Xavier, Darfur: African Genocide (New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2008), 15.
Explaining Darfur Four Lectures on the Ongoing Genocide (Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA, 2006), 10.
Explaining Darfur Four Lectures on the Ongoing Genocide (Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA, 2006), 11.
Explaining Darfur Four Lectures on the Ongoing Genocide (Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA, 2006), 12.
"Background," Targeting the Fur: Mass Killings in Darfur : Background, , accessed May 02, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/africa/darfur0105/2.htm.
"Events in 2003-2004," Targeting the Fur: Mass Killings in Darfur : Events in 2003-2004, , accessed May 02, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/africa/darfur0105/3.htm.
"ABUSES IN DARFUR BY GOVERNMENT FORCES." Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan: ABUSES IN DARFUR BY GOVERNMENT FORCES. Accessed May 02, 2018. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0404/4.htm.

Other Works Consulted:

John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond, Darfur and the Crime of Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Pictures:

"Darfur Descends Into Chaos - Photo Essays," Time, , accessed May 02, 2018, http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1719234_1543624,00.html.