religious practice. ‘African’ and ‘Arab’ were not meaningful divisions in Darfur and even Sheikh Hilal, despite his casual racism and assumptions of the superiority of his tribe and nomadic way of life, boasted about his ‘African’ antecedents.
By the 1980s, however, his world had ended. Drought, desertification and famine had disrupted the earlier moral geography, and as the great camel herds began to die off from a lack of grazing land, nomads came into conflict with agriculturalists while searching for new pastures. In some cases they attempted to abandon their herds and started to farm as an alternative livelihood, but this met with resistance from already settled populations. Nomadic tribes that would later be identified as ‘Arab’ and associated with the janjawiid were, at the outset, also victims.
While conflict mounted internally, exacerbated in part by a changing climate, Darfur was caught in the middle of the geopolitics of Khartoum, Tripoli and N’Djamena. In Khartoum, increasingly Islamist governments took office. A military coup brought Omar al-Bashir to power in 1989 and the regime increasingly defined itself in opposition to the predominantly Christian and animist South, in an ongoing war that left more than two million dead, and promoted a strict adherence to a racialised conception of Islam. At the same time Libya’s dictator, Colonel Gaddafi, embarked on the creation of an ‘Arab belt’ across the Sahara. Central to this geopolitical project was control of Chad. Darfur, which borders both countries, was used as a base by Libyan-backed Chadian militias fighting against the government in the capital N’Djamena. Gaddafi sponsored the establishment of the Islamic Legion, consisting of Chadian rebels and discontented Sahelian Arabs, who were displaced from their lands and livelihoods by drought and local conflict. The Islamic Legion was trained by the Libyan regime in a toxic mix of desert guerilla warfare and a virulent form of Arab supremacism. The defeat of the Islamic Legion in 1988 had a profound impact as its fighters returned to Darfur and formed the Arab Gathering—an armed political movement ostensibly organised to protect the interests of a disadvantaged minority within Sudan, but possessed of weapons, training and an ideology of racial supremacy.
As an ‘Arab’ identity was being cultivated by extremist movements in Tripoli and Khartoum, an ‘African’ identity was also being manufactured. The resistance leader of South Sudan, John Garang, sought to alter the course of the North–South war by enlisting non-Arab tribes (who were a majority of the overall population of Sudan) to a common cause with the South, whose sub-Saharan identity and predominantly Christian religion were more easily identified as ‘African’. This initially had little traction in Darfur, as the early stages of Khartoum’s Islamist turn promised to include all good Muslims—defined by conformity with increasingly strict religious practice rather than by race—in the affairs and rewards of the state.
By 2000, however, it appeared that this offer was a sham. When Bashir took power in 1989, he replaced this inclusive version of Islam with one that emphasised the primacy of his own and Khartoum’s Arabised elite. The regime in Khartoum did not invest its resources in Darfur as had been promised and the Darfurian opposition produced a ‘Black Book’ that documented this systematic political and economic neglect along racial lines. In this context, John Garang’s offer of ‘African’ or ‘non-Arab’ solidarity took on greater political appeal. In 2003, two Darfuri opposition groups—the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)—united and attacked a government base in El Fasher to instigate armed opposition to the regime in Khartoum. Already massively in debt and fully committed to the war with South Sudan, Bashir responded to this new threat by exploiting
By the 1980s, however, his world had ended. Drought, desertification and famine had disrupted the earlier moral geography, and as the great camel herds began to die off from a lack of grazing land, nomads came into conflict with agriculturalists while searching for new pastures. In some cases they attempted to abandon their herds and started to farm as an alternative livelihood, but this met with resistance from already settled populations. Nomadic tribes that would later be identified as ‘Arab’ and associated with the janjawiid were, at the outset, also victims.
While conflict mounted internally, exacerbated in part by a changing climate, Darfur was caught in the middle of the geopolitics of Khartoum, Tripoli and N’Djamena. In Khartoum, increasingly Islamist governments took office. A military coup brought Omar al-Bashir to power in 1989 and the regime increasingly defined itself in opposition to the predominantly Christian and animist South, in an ongoing war that left more than two million dead, and promoted a strict adherence to a racialised conception of Islam. At the same time Libya’s dictator, Colonel Gaddafi, embarked on the creation of an ‘Arab belt’ across the Sahara. Central to this geopolitical project was control of Chad. Darfur, which borders both countries, was used as a base by Libyan-backed Chadian militias fighting against the government in the capital N’Djamena. Gaddafi sponsored the establishment of the Islamic Legion, consisting of Chadian rebels and discontented Sahelian Arabs, who were displaced from their lands and livelihoods by drought and local conflict. The Islamic Legion was trained by the Libyan regime in a toxic mix of desert guerilla warfare and a virulent form of Arab supremacism. The defeat of the Islamic Legion in 1988 had a profound impact as its fighters returned to Darfur and formed the Arab Gathering—an armed political movement ostensibly organised to protect the interests of a disadvantaged minority within Sudan, but possessed of weapons, training and an ideology of racial supremacy.
As an ‘Arab’ identity was being cultivated by extremist movements in Tripoli and Khartoum, an ‘African’ identity was also being manufactured. The resistance leader of South Sudan, John Garang, sought to alter the course of the North–South war by enlisting non-Arab tribes (who were a majority of the overall population of Sudan) to a common cause with the South, whose sub-Saharan identity and predominantly Christian religion were more easily identified as ‘African’. This initially had little traction in Darfur, as the early stages of Khartoum’s Islamist turn promised to include all good Muslims—defined by conformity with increasingly strict religious practice rather than by race—in the affairs and rewards of the state.
By 2000, however, it appeared that this offer was a sham. When Bashir took power in 1989, he replaced this inclusive version of Islam with one that emphasised the primacy of his own and Khartoum’s Arabised elite. The regime in Khartoum did not invest its resources in Darfur as had been promised and the Darfurian opposition produced a ‘Black Book’ that documented this systematic political and economic neglect along racial lines. In this context, John Garang’s offer of ‘African’ or ‘non-Arab’ solidarity took on greater political appeal. In 2003, two Darfuri opposition groups—the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)—united and attacked a government base in El Fasher to instigate armed opposition to the regime in Khartoum. Already massively in debt and fully committed to the war with South Sudan, Bashir responded to this new threat by exploiting
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