Why does a solution to the conflict in Darfur seem so intractable?

Résumé du document

In September 2004, one year after the beginning of the civil war in Sudan, Colin Powell said it was ''genocide''. Since the beginning of the war, many associations were created in order to 'Save Darfur'. Darfur has recently been one of the most publicized wars in Africa, however, the conflict is still not resolved and today, it is estimated that 200 people die every day as a consequence of the conflict, either because of diseases or starvation.

Besides that, the United Nations approved many resolutions sending troops to Darfur, a cease-fire was signed in 2004, and the International Criminal Court issued two warrants of arrest in May 2007. But none of these have stopped the conflict yet. It seems clear that despite a widespread media coverage and diplomatic agitation, no solution has yet proved effective in the resolution of Darfur's conflict. Darfur region borders Chad and the Central African Republic, comprising five to six million people and remaining largely underdeveloped. This region is home to four main tribes: the Furs, which gave the name to Darfur (meaning in Arabic ‘‘Fur's home''), the Massaleits, the Arabs, and the Zaghawas.

The last decades have seen much civil wars and unrest in the region. The first conflict took place from 1987 to 1989, and was mainly the result of ethnic tensions between Furs and Arabs. In this first conflict, the central government did not seem to play a role in the confrontations. The second, from 1996 and 1998, between the Massaleits and Arabs was over Massaleits' territory. The last conflict that we still witness today begun in 2003. The key event seen as the trigger of the civil war was the attack and occupation of Gulu on the 10th of February, 2003 by the rebel groups Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). They were asking for a better share of resources and wealth. In response, Khartum led an aerial attack and let the Janjaweed slaughter the local populations. Since then, slaughters, pillages and rapes have been going on in Darfur. Why does a solution in Darfur seem so hard to find and realize?

Extraits

[...] This relation is evidence by the meeting of Georges W. Bush in July 2006 with Minni Minnawi, the leader of the SLA. Sudan is also setting trade relationships with Iran and Russia. Therefore, a resolution of the conflict through international institutions like the United Nations is difficult, as China is part of the Security Council and threats to impose its right of veto on every decision that would involve sanctions. What is more, even if some resolutions have been taken concerning the deployment of a United Nations' force in Darfur after the failure of the AMIS mission led by the African Union the non cooperative nature of the Sudanese government prevents the application of such resolutions. [...]

[...] Beyond an apparent ethnic conflict, some political, geopolitical and economic issues are at stake, given that the Sudanese government is implicated in the war. More evidence in this direction is that since December 2006, a new rebel group, the Baggaras Reizegat, who are an Arabic tribe in Darfur, have begun to fight against the Janjaweed. This challenges the idea that this war is only a tribal conflict. In fact, to go further in that direction, it is also interesting to have a look at the Janjaweed's composition. [...]

[...] Many other Sudanese leaders, including the President himself, are supposed to be black-listed. (Pronk, 2006) In addition to that, the existence of oil reserves and fertile soils means that abandoning Darfur to rebel groups is unthinkable for Khartum, especially now that oil is considered a scarce resource. That is why Khartum uses the Janjaweed rather than the army in Darfur: what they want to do is to chase away the sedentary peasants in order to take control of their lands so they can exploit it for agricultural purposes and oil extraction. [...]

[...] Let us examine the various reasons fueling the war in terms of broader theories about civil wars. Firstly, Darfur during the last decade has had to face crucial desertification and drought. According to one explanation, as the Sahel region was ravaged by the effects of climate change. As the desert ate the fields, nomad Arabs tribes had to go south in order to find new fertile soils. However, they arrived in fields already occupied by different tribes, and many argue that competition for fertile fields would have led to the war between Arabs and Zaghawas. [...]

[...] The government managed to aggravate the conflict by adding an ethnic perspective, creating and emphasizing an imaginary Arabic identity in order to reinforce existing tensions and adding irrationality to the conflict. It could be put in parallel with the situation of Yugoslavia under Milosevic, where he created, in a region where people from different ethnicities used to live quite peacefully together, a strong Serbian identity in order to fuel the conflict (Ignatieff, 1993). The irrationality at play in the conflict is illustrated by the actions of the Janjaweed. [...]