It takes no special gift of insight to detect a replay of the Rwanda tragedy in the relentless killings sweeping across Darfur. Of all the parallels that come to mind, none is more compelling than the thoroughly inadequate response of the international community in the face of such unmitigated human disaster.

As is becoming more evident every day, the performance of the African Union in Darfur—officially designated as the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) -- is less than edifying. Only under considerable international pressure and promise of financial assistance, following the coollapse of the April 8, 2004 ceasefire agreement, did the AU agree to send in a peace-keeping force of some 4,000 men, consisting in large part of Nigerians (1,200), and a few hundred Rwandan troops. To this must be added 700 military observers, whose observations do nothing to stop the carnage. Despite generous funding from the US and the EU – estimated at half a billion dollars --. the AU mission has been notoriously inefficient in preventing the so-called janjawids (“evil horsemen”) from committing atrocities against civilians.

By way of a prefatory note to this discussion, Samantha Power’s sobering assessment is worth bearing in mind: “The AU mission is clearly overwhelmed. Its teams, spread out across an area the size of France, manage at most three patrols per day in various sectors of the region, and African countries are hardly eager to send in more soldiers…Soon this stopgap mission will fail not only those in need of protection but all the other interested parties as well. The Western powers have already spent more than a billion dollars feeding refugees in camps that feel increasingly permanent, and it is nearly inevitable that, as in the West Bank and Pakistan, some Muslims in these camps will be radicalized and take up arms locally, or, perhaps, further afield”.[1] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn1>

The Ghosts of Rwanda

If anyone deserves credit for drawing public attention to our inability to learn any lesson from the Rwandan carnage, it is Eric Reeves, whose eloquent wake-up calls in the media and on the net have yet to be heeded by policy-makers here and in Europe. Comparing AMIS to the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), he notes that “we are witnessing an equivalently dishonest and cowardly failure”, and that “the AU is no more capable of halting the ongoing destruction of primarily African tribal populations than Dallaire was able to halt the interahamwe or deter Hutu extremists of the Rwandan government and military”. “The ghosts of Rwanda”, he concludes, “are stirring ominously in Darfur. Differences in geography, history, and genocidal means do less and less to obscure the ghastly similarities between international failure in 1994 and the world’s current willingness to allow ethnically-targeted human destruction to proceed essentially unchecked”. And because of this appalling inertia, leading to a death toll “exceeding 400,000”, he speculates that “with human mortality poised to increase significantly in coming weeks and months, there is no clear evidence that Rwanda’s unspeakable slaughter will not eventually be numerically surpassed”.[2] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn2>

Not even the most casual observer of Darfur’s agony can remain insensitive to the scale of the human sufferings unfolding in this forbidding dystopia. But it takes more than a superficial acquaintance with the history, geography and politics of the region to appreciate how radically different from that of Rwanda is the context of the killings in Darfur. Unlike Rwanda (26,000 sq. kms) Darfur covers a huge expanse of territory, about the size of Texas. In a space of some 450,000 sq. kms., approximately ten times the size of Rwanda, the population is estimated to be between 3.5 to 4 million,[3] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn3> i.e. half that of Rwanda, much of it distributed among scores of small village communities. This basic fact speaks volumes about the enormous logistical difficulties facing the 4,000-strong AU peace-keeping force in its Sysiphean efforts to stop the hemorage.

Africans vs. Arabs?

As the name indicates, the Fur people has given name to an area which comprises not just the Fur but a complex mix of African and Arab populations. “The population of Darfur”, Gustav Nachtigal wrote in the 1870s, “may be divided on the one hand into Negroes and Arabs, or on the other into its original inhabitants and the conquered peoples or foreigners”.[4] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn4> This Arab/African polarity did not rule out a common set of regional identities, or for that matter multiple identities. A central theme of Darfur’s precolonial history refers to the process of early state formation around the Keira sultanate, whose core area was the mountainous region of Jebel Marra. Territorial expansion went hand in hand with ethnic absorption, with the Fur people serving as the pivot around which a specific ethno-regional identity eventually developed.[5] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn5> Anyone familiar with Nachtigal’s painstaking description of the “Organization of the Fur State”[6] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn6> cannot fail to be impressed by the extraordinary complexity and highly bureaucratized character of this archaic yet inherently fragile state system, soon to collapse under the combined onslaught of the Mahdist revolt, the arrival of the Turco-Egyptians and ultimately the imposition of colonial controls. The resulting political vacuum has yet to be filled.

However dated – and not always exempt of ethnic biases[7] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn7> -- Nachtigal’s narrative makes clear to the reader the danger of reducing Darfurians to a simple racial dichotomy. Cutting acrross the “Negro vs. Arab” fault line, he notes, are countless other divisions, as between those who pay tribute and those who do not, those “who have equal rights” and those who do not, those who are of foreign origins (from Bornu and Baguirmi) and the autochtons, those tribes that were conquered and those that successfully resisted conquest, and so forth.[8] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn8> Some groups are nomads, others semi-nomads or sedentary, among both Africans and Arabs. An there are those Africans “who appear by mixing with Arab tribes to have been transformed centuries ago, and now live in Darfur among the Rezeqat, where they can no longer be distinguished from the Arabs either physically or socially”.[9] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn9> By way of an example Nachtigal cites a Zaghawa sub-group, the “Zoghawa (sic) Amm Kimmelte”, which comes as a surprise when one considers the strong and unanimous identification of today’s Zaghawa with the African community.

The Arabs, likewise, are divided into numerous subgroups, some of which are found in both Chad and Sudan. In his listing of “major non-Arab groups”, and “major Arab groups” Alex de Waal, a leading authority on Darfur, comes up with a total of seven Arab and fifteen non-Arab communities , each in turn divided into sub-categories. Although Arabs form the bulk of the janjawid -- the instrument used by Khartoum to kill, maim, or displace Africans civilians -- he notes that “the largest and most influeential of Darfur’s Arabs are not involved, including the Baggara, Rizeigat, the Habbaniya, the Ma’aliya, and most of the Ta’aisha”.[10] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn10> As in Rwanda, the tendency in Darfur is to identify the “bad guys” with an entire ethnic community.

The distinction between Arabs and Africans is, to a large extent, a social construct (not unlike Hutu and Tutsi). De Waal calls the Arab vs.African dichotomy “historically bogus, but disturbingly powerful”.[11] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn11> The labels, after all, are by no means exclusive. There has been in the past considerable intermarriage between the two groups and identity switches are by no mans uncommon, a phenomenon again reminiscent of relations between Hutu and Tutsi. Both communities are Muslim, and Arabic is widely spoken among them. Although sporadic conflicts between Arabs and Africans were by no means unheard of in colonial and pre-colonial times, the scale of today’s carnage has no precedent in history. What is unprecedented as well is the extent to which ideology and propaganda, originating from within and outside Sudan, have contributed to the growing polarization of ethnic identities.

The Roots of Carnage

Just how many have been killed since the outbreak of the rebellion is hard to tell. The figures vary wildly, ranging from 70,000 to an estimated 400,000. Although there is no question that the figure of 70,000 grossly underestimates the extent of the disaster – Nelson Kasfir informs us that it appears to have been borrowed from a WHO estimate of deaths from disease and malnutrition in IDP camps[12] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn12> -- how many died by disease and malnutrition, how many under the blows of the janjawids, or as acts of revenge from onee insurgent faction against another, is impossible to determine.

As in the case of Rwanda, no single factor analysis will do to explain the cause of the tragedy. We are confronted with an array of forces and circumstances that go far beyond the boundaries of Sudan. Most observers would agree that the triggering factor was the surprise attack on El Fasher, in April 2003, by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), resulting in the destruction of seven military aircraft and the death of about 100 people. But El Fasher was only the symptom of more fundamental factors.

Of these perhaps the most consequential has to do with the steady advance of desertification through much of northern Darfur, resulting in devastating famine. According to Gérard Prunier, what is known locally as the maja’a al-gutala (“the famine that kills”) caused the death of an estimated 95,000 people from August 1984 to November 1985. With the massive population movements from north to south -- and with Arab cattle herders moving in ever increasing numbers into those areas of the south less affected by the drought --- a whole series of local clashes over land erupted, first between Fur and Arabs in the Jebel Mara area (1987-89), then between Massalit and Arabs (1996-1998)[13] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn13> . Each time the parties to a conflict reached out to the Arab-dominated provincial government for a fair settlement, the government consistently sided by the Arabs.

The spread of a stridently pro-Islamic ideology did little to diminish the government’s blatant favoritism displayed towards Arabs. The roots of what de Waal calls “an Arab supremacist ideology” are to be found in part in ideas indigenous to the Sudan – generally associated with Hasan al-Turabi’s National Islamic Front (NIF) and later his Popular Congress (PC). Just as important, however, has been the export of “Arabism” from Chad and Libya. The Chadian side of the story, in a nutshell, involves a warlord named Acyl Ahmed, who, as head of the Armée du Volcan, in the late 1970s and early 80s, was able to mobilize a large number of Chadian Arabs against Hissene Habre’s Forces Armées du Nord (FAN). Of all the Trojan horses produced by Colonel Gaddafi’s stable Acyl was by far the most faithful. Although Acyl died in 1982, his pro-Arab ideology is still alive and well. For this much of the credit goes to Gaddafi. After suffering a major defeat in northern Chad at the hands of Hissène Habre in 1987 the Libyan leader turned his attention to Darfur. To carve out for himself another sphere of influence and hold aloft the banner of the “Arab Gathering” (Al tajammu al-arabi) -- a “militantly racist and pan-Arabist organization”, Prunier informs us[14] -- some 2,000 Islamic Legion troops were sent to Darfur in 1987. The ideological seeds of the present conflict, in short, were planted long before the attack on El Fasher.[15] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn15>

Exactly how the southern rebellion has affected its counterpart in Darfur is not entirely clear. Through the years, going back to the Federal Democratic Alliance of the former Darfur Governor Ibrahim Deraige, the Southern Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) has given moral and financial support to the African resistance in Darfur, but in so doing it has unwittingly stimulated factional disputes about the distribution of arms and money. If the SPLA struggle in the south served as an example to emulate, this doesn’t mean that it has always been to the advantage of the Darfurian rebels. Again, considerable ambiguity surrounds the fall-out of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Khartoum and the SPLA in the south in January 2005. The effect has been to encourage the insurgents to make every effort to wrest a similar agreement from Khartoum, while at the same time contributing to the hardening the position of the central government on meeting their demands: after virtually giving up the monopoly of the ruling party, in line with the CPA, it is now dead set against any further erosion of its executive power

A Fractured Insurgency

The fragmentation of the insurgency into rival factions, though rarely mentioned in the media, let alone explicated, is not the least of the obstacles to peace. Only recently has Nicholas Kristof, -- the most insistent and articulate critic of Western policies in Darfur – grudgingly recognized that “some responsibility atttaches to the rebels in Darfu” as “they have been fighting each other instead of negotiating a peace with the government that would end the bloodbath”[16] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn16> Yet there has been bitter infighting among rebels almost from the beginning. No sooner was the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) created, in early 2003, than a violent struggle for the leadership of the movement began to surface.

Today those who form the bulk of the insurgents are drawn from the Zaghawa, Fur and Massalit “tribes”, with the Zaghawa straddling the boundary between Chad and Darfur. Each is divided into subgroups, with the Zaghawa, for example, split between Tuer, Bideyat and Kobe, and each sub-group in turn divided into clans.

If the Zaghawa have been the driving force behind the insurgency, this is because many “had acquired professional military training in the Chadian or Sudanese armies, a fact that has caused them to predominate in the upper ranks of the insurgency to this day”.[17] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn17> Which also helps explain why they came to be seen with considerable suspicion by Fuer and Massalit elements -- but leaves unanswered the question of why they ended up fighting each other. PPart of the answer lies in the multiplicity of sub-ethnic and clanic fissures among the Zaghawa. The really critical factor, however, has to do with the impact of Chadian politics on the rebellion. Just as Darfur has had a significant backlash effect in Chad, the reverse is equally true.

The insurgents are divided into two principal rival armed factions, the SLA and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the latter, the weaker of the two, drawing much of its support from Zaghawa Kobe, and the former from Tuer and Bideyat as well as Fur and Massalit. The SLA, founded in February 2003, is decided secular in orientation, while the JEM remains highly receptive to Hasan al-Turabi Islamic ideology. The SLA, moreover, claims a more diversified ethnic membership, which is also why it is more vulnerable to internal dissentions. The early history of the SLA provides a dramatic illustration of the potential for disintegration inherent in its ethnic composition. At first every effort was made to include representatives of each major ethnic group in its leadership. Thus while the chairmanship of the movement was given to a Fur (Abdel Wahid Mohammed el-Nur), the deputy chairmanship went to a Massalit (Mansour Arbab) and the military command to a Zaghawa (Abdallah Abakar, replaced after his death by Minni Arko Minnawi). After receiving substantial support from Zaghawa elements in the Chadian military, Minnawi’s Zaghawa scored a number of military successes against the Khartoum government, only to raise the anxieties of Fur elements. A bitter struggle for leadership ensued between Fur and Zaghawa. In the words of a recent Crisis Group report, “the rapid expansion and intensification of the conflict overwhelmed the leaders and their nascent structures. Over time the animosity between Minni and Abdel Wahid grew as they jostled for primacy. Whereas Minni considers that Zaghawa military strength should be reflected in the leadership, Abdel Wahid and other non-Zaghawa insist on the original tribal allocations of positions, including a Fur as chairman”.[18] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn18>

The Chadian Connection

By then, however, the JEM had already emerged as a powerful challenge to the SLA, militarily and ideologically. It shares Hasan al-Turabi’s Islamic ideas, and is said to have received financial and military assistance from Turabi’s Popular Congress. In part for that reason, and because it is solidly Kobe, its relationship with President Idriss Deby of Chad, a Bideyat, is fraught with tension. It is indeed widely rumored that Deby was instrumental in stimulating the rise of a breakaway faction, the National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD). Another split emerged in April 2005 following a trial of strength between field commander Mohammed Salih Harba and JEM’s top leader, Khalil Ibrahim, leading to the creation of a Provisional Revolutionary Collective Leadership Council. Some observers do not hesitate to see in this latest defection the evil hand of Idriss Deby. As the crisis spills deeper into Chad, Deby could find himself drawn into a dangerous trial of strength between different Zaghawa subgroups, notably Bideyat (pro-Deby) vs. Kobe.

The Chadian connection is likely to remain a critical dimension of the crisis in Darfur, if only because each of the insurgent factions, as well as the janjawids, include a substantial number of Chadians. One well-informed Chadian observer told this writer that the majority of the janjawids were Chadian Arabs, many of Juhaina origins. Their expectation, presumably, is that Khartoum will return the favor and help them overthrow Deby, in a replay of the scenario that brought Deby to power in 1990.[19] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn19> Today Deby finds himself in a cleft stick: by refusing to give assistance to the SLA – which, as noted earlier, includes a fair number of Zaghawa from his own tribe, the Bideyat -- he could seriously antagonize the Bideyat of his own Presidential Guard, who could turn against him; on the other hand, shoould he get actively involved on the side of the SLA, the likelihood is that Khartoum would immediately retaliate. The worst case scenario would be a Khartoum-sponsored alliance between Darfurian and Chadian Arabs directed against Deby’s regime. No less threatening would be a Kobe-instigated coup within the Chadian army – a scenario that almost became reality in March of this year. Deby is fully aware of his debt to Khartoum – whose support proved crucial in the months preceding his successful seizure of power in 1990. One wonders, however, how long Deby can maintain a stance of neutrality while his own people are being massacred.

Is This Genocide?

There is a curious disconnect between the enormous complexity of the forces at work in the Darfurian killing fields and the readiness with which genocide is invoked by human rights advocates. For some the question of establishing the evidence of genocide is irrelevant; more important is to use the G-word as a tool to mobilize public opinion. For others, however, whether we are dealing with genocide or something else – e.g. ethnic cleansing or the use of force to crush a rebellion – is the crucial issue. Thus Nelson Kasfir argues that even though there is no doubt about the identity of the perpetrators, and their determination to destroy “in whole or in part” the African population, the element of intent remains unclear. He suggests that the aim of Khartoum could just as well be seen as an attempt to crush a rebellion, not to commit genocide. He adds “the terms of the peace agreement that the government signed to end the war in the south are strikingly inconsistent with the presumption that it acts with genocidal intent in Darfur”.[20] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn20> In other words, if the government agreed to end the civil war in the south by giving them control over their region, it is difficult to imagine that a different (i.e.genocidal) solution could be envisaged in Darfur. Again to quote from Kasfir, “it is hard to argue that (the Khartoum government) has genocidal intentions towards Africans living in one area of the country when it has settled a civil war in another area on terms that bind it to work closely together with Africans”[21] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn21> . I shall leave it to the reader to appreciate the persuasiveness of the Kasfir argument. While some may question “intent”, others may raise equally legitimate questions the targeting of Africans by Africans.[22] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn22> What seems increasingly clear is that the ongoing debate about Darfur’s “ambiguous genocide”, to use Prunier’s expression, is, in practical terms, extremely counterproductive. While the controversy goes on, people are dying by the hundreds of thousands.

Seen in the light of the efforts of the AU to stymie all attempts at blowing the whistle on Khartoum, the on-going debate on genocide sounds increasingly hollow. As these lines are being written the news of the AU’s latest move to block a EU-sponsored resolution in the UN General Assembly’s social and humanitarian committee to end the culture of impunity and disarm the militias responsible for the massacres is little short of astounding. So, also, is the explanation proffered by Nigeria, representing the AU, to the effect that “any condemnatory action would endanger the peace talks”.[23] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn23> Given the farcical quality of the peace talks going on in Abuja, one is impelled to wonder how much credibility the AU can still claim for itself. With Sudan assuming the AU’s rotating presidency in January 2006, the stage will be set for a further emasculation of the mandate of the African Union Mission in Sudan. (To French ears its acronym – AMIS – seems entirely appropriate in view of the cozyness of the relations between the Sudan government and the AU. Could it be that an extra “s” at the end would make it even more symbolic of its true nature?)

It is difficult to dispute Eric Reeves’s statement that the current mess in Darfur “makes it terrifying clear that the only lesson of Rwanda is that there is no lesson”. Whether any lesson will be learned from AMIS’s appalling performance in Darfur, soon enough to prevent Samantha Power’s depressing speculations from becoming reality, remains to be seen.



Footnotes
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[1] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref1> Samantha Power, “Missions”, The New Yorker, November 28, 2005, p. 61.
[2] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref2> Eric Reeves, “The Ghosts of Rwanda: The Failure of the African Union in Darfur”, Nov. 13, 2005.
[3] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref3> Douglas H. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, (James Currey, 2003) p. 139.
[4] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref4> Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan, Tome IV, Wadai and Darfur. Translated from the original German with an introduction and notes by Allan G.B. Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher. (University of California Press, 1971), p. 346.
[5] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref5> For an outstanding discussion of regional identity formation in Darfur, see Alex de Waal, “Who Are the Darfurians? Arab and African Identities, Violence and External Engagement”, African Affairs, 104/415 (2005), p
[6] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref6> Chapter 5 of his monumental work on Waddai and Darfur, op. cit., pp. 324-345.
[7] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref7> Consider his description of the Fur: “The Fur or Forawa have a fairly dark skin, grey-black or black, are of middle height and with undistinguished features. Their character is arrogant, hot-tempered and revengeful, and they are much given to quarrelling and outbreaks of violence. They can scarcely lay claim to any reputation of real bravery. They have little talent for industry, almost as little indeed as their western neighbors, the people of Wadai, and like all mountain dwellers, hold tenaciously to they ancient manners and customs, so that Islam itself, of which in the larger villages they are fanatical adherents, has not been able in the more distant regions to suppress Paganism completely”. Wadai and Sudan, op. cit., p. 349.
[8] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref8> Ibid., pp. 346 ff.
[9] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref9> Ibid., p. 349.
[10] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref10> “Who are the Darfurians?”, op. cit., p. 199.
[11] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref11> Ibid., p. 197.
[12] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref12> Nelson Kasfir, “Sudan’s Darfur: Is it Genocide?”, Current History, vol. 104, no. 682, p. 196.
[13] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref13> The parallel with the situation in southern Chad is striking: as in Darfur, Arab and Gorane cattle herders are moving in ever growing numbers into Saraland, causing countless “accrochages”, some extremely bloody; the situation is made all the more explosive by the fact that the Sara are overwhelmingly Christian.
[14] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref14> Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, op. cit., p. 45.
[15] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref15> From a pro-Arab praise singer, Gaddafi has recently morphed into an apostle of peace: thus in July Libya took the initiative in organizing reconciliation talks in Tripoli: the so-called Darfur Forum, which includes prominent Darfurians drawn from the interior and exile rebels, Khartoum-based politicians and tribal chiefs opposed to the policies of the central government. Although Gaddafi’s initiative did lead to a cease-fire agreement in July 2005, countless violations have occurred since then
[16] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref16> Nicholas D. Kristof, “Never again, again?”, The New York Times, Nov. 20, 2005, p. 13.
[17] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref17> Crisis Group, Unifying Darfur’s Rebels: A Prerequisite for Peace, Africa Briefing No. 32, Nairobni/Brussels 6 October 2005, p. 2.
[18] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref18> Unifying Darfur’s Rebels, op. cit., p. 3.
[19] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref19> Critical to the success of Deby’s overthrow of Hissene Habre was the support he received from Khartoum in recruiting Darfur-based Zaghawa into his army.
[20] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref20> Nelson Kasfir, “Death in Darfur: But is it Genocide?” Current History, vol. 104, no. 682 (May 2005), p. 200.
[21] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref21> Ibid.
[22] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref22> There is growing evidence that a proxy war is now developing among African tribes. According to recent information from the field the government of Sudan is directly responsible for providing the Fallata with weapons to fight the Massalit, a close ally of the SLA. The result has been scores of casualties in and around Tullus, in south Darfur. (Private email from D.B., in Nyala, Nov. 23, 2005).
[23] <http://us.f517.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=16924&inc=200&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref23> The New York Times, November 24, 2005, p. 6.
 

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