Understanding Conflicts and Crisis in Darfur/Sudan

By Rebecca Harshbarger, Program Associate

• Why is the Darfur/Sudan Issue so Critical in 2006?
• Sudan North-South Peace Agreement (CPA)
• Who Has Been Missing From the Peace Process
• How Does the Civil War Between North and South Relate to Darfur? What is going on in Darfur?
• Fur Ethnic Group
• Massaleit ethnic group
• Zaghawa ethnic group
• Janjaweed and Armed militias
• Africa Action’s Guide Talking Points on Stopping Genocide in Darfur
• Resources: Work in Solidarity, Advocate, Donate, News Sources, Books, Music, Art

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I. Why is the situation in Sudan so critical in 2006?: an overview of issues

Above: Peter Dut Agon with mother, returning home to the Southern Sudan after eighteen years.
Source: BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4587592.stm (Picture Number 5)

Baby Abou, Malual Kon, southern Sudan, photographed by Roger Lemoyne for UNICEF, http://www.irinnews.org/S_report.asp?ReportID=36082

African Union Peacekeepers

Derk Segaar, UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51098&SelectRegion=East_Africa

Sudan is the largest country on the African continent and thus plays a pivotal role in the overall well-being and security of people throughout Africa. It is roughly six times the size of California, or a little over 75% of India. Its threat to peace, well-beings and prosperity will directly reflect on the African continent as a whole.

Armed militias have committed genocide by mass-murdering people either in the Southern Sudan or those from the Southern Sudan on the basis of their ethnicity, triggering mass migrations and the displacement of at millions of people. Many believe that these armed militias were funded by the Khartoum government. On January 8, 2005, a peace agreement was brokered between Northern Sudan (the Khartoum government) and Southern Sudan (the main Southern rebel group in the civil war, the ethnic African ‘SPLA’), ending twenty years of civil war. There is an upcoming referendum for the Southern half of Sudan to decide if it wishes to recede, or remain part of the Sudan.

The situation has been far from peace. Here are major critical issues:

-Ethnic cleansing: The war continues to inflict irreparable damage on a delicate ethnic balance of seven million people who are uniformly Muslim.

-Complexity of conflict: The conflict is actually the multiple intertwined one, with layers of struggle. One is between government-aligned forces and rebels; a second entails indiscriminate attacks of the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia on civilians; and a third involves a struggle among Darfur communities themselves. Its implications go far beyond Darfur's borders.

-Expansion of conflict: Due to attacks by armed militias on the border between Chad and Sudan, the relationship between Chad and Sudan has been highly conflicted, at best it is tense. The war indirectly threatens the regimes in both Sudan and Chad and has the potential to inspire insurgencies in other parts of the country. The escalating proxy war between Sudan and Chad threatens to produce a new humanitarian catastrophe on both sides of the border. Increase your knowledge on Chad through BCC.com here.

-Migration: This year, the largest movement of people in recent history is ongoing! An estimated 500,000 and 6 million people are estimated to return to their homes in Southern Sudan.

-Failure to Protect: Early February, 2006, the names of high-level Sudanese officials have been identified for involvement in gross violations of human rights. This demonstrates the Government of Sudan’s failure to protect its citizens. The Sudanese government bears primary responsibility for the deteriorating situation, yet it is still making little effort to stabilise matters, curb militias or secure roads from bandits and rogue elements for civilians. In violation of numerous commitments, it still uses offensive air power, supports militias and stokes inter-communal violence as part of its counter-insurgency campaign.

-International Intervention: The international strategy for dealing with the Darfur crisis primarily through the small (7,000 troops) African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) is at a dead end. AMIS credibility is at an all-time low, with the ceasefire it could never monitor properly in tatters.In the face of this, the international community is backing away from meaningful action. (International Crisis Group Report, March 2006)

It is international, collective duty to protect civilians in Darfur!

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II. Sudan North-South Peace Agreement

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement is a collection of agreements agreed to December 31, 2004 and signed, in a formal ceremony, on January 9, 2005. The signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of the Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement was considered 'historic'.

Left: After the peace deal was brokered, more than one million people turned out to welcome Garang to Khartoum, capitol of the Sudan.

Center: Vice-President John Garang on the left, President Omar al-Bashir on the right.

Right: Mr. Garang's body arrived in the main Sudanese southern town of Juba on Saturday after being taken to a number of towns in the mainly Christian and animist south to allow thousands to pay their respects. Successor to Garang is Mr. Salva Kiir, who spoke to the mourners. Kiir signed the new Sudan Constitution on December 5, 2005.

(BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4126370.stm).

 

Key Actors:

Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M)
The SPLA/M was led by John Garang, a heroic symbol of the Sudanese liberation movement, who tragically perished in a helicopter accident in the mountains of Southern Sudan. Under the peace deal, he was set to become the vice-president of Sudan, named deputy to President Omar al-Bashir three weeks before his tragic passing. Under Garang, there were significant human rights abuses- people within the movement who challenged him as rebel leader could be jailed or killed in the Sudanese civil war. However, Garang kept the rebel movement united under extremely difficult circumstances.

Sudanese Government in Khartoum
The government has been led by President Omar al-Bashir, who came into power of Sudan in a coup in 1989, backed by different Islamist groups. He introduced different parts of Sharia law for all of the Sudan, despite that Southern Sudan is primarily animist and Christian, and oppose Sharia law. In addition to historically fighting the rebels under the leadership of John Garang, he also struggled to keep power over Sudan, primarily from Sunni Muslim Hassan al-Turabi, previous an ally to the President. With Egyptian and other Sudanese soldiers, al-Bashir fought in the Arab-Israeli War (1973). The coup that led al-Bashir into office was designed to prevent the peace deal with John Garang, which would have had the South ruled by secular law.

United Nations
The UN had the Secretary-General’s Representative to the Sudan, Jan Pronk (See Secretary General’s Press Release: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/sga877.doc.htm). Pronk’s career has focused on sustainable economic and environmental development. For instance, he was president of the UN conventions on Climate Change in 2000 and 2001 ( The Hague and Bonn, respectively).

For More information: -United Nation’s Security Council Press Release on the Sudan Peace Agreement:

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Who has been missing from the Peace Process?

Given Sudan's colonial history and the failed Addis Ababa Agreement, there is reason to be skeptical that the CPA can hardly result in a lasting peace. Although the CPA, if enforced, will satisfy the south's desire for more autonomy or total independence, it neglects the other conflicts around the country, the Khartoum government has centralized power and excluded groups in the periphery from the political process and from development efforts.

Recently, for instance, the conflict in this "land of the Fur" has come to the forefront of international public's attention. Unlike the civil war, the conflict here is not between Christian and Animist blacks and Muslim Arabs; the Darfur conflict is between black Muslims and Arab Muslims. Since early 2003, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement have been attacking government targets and claiming that Khartoum has neglected the region and oppressed black Africans in favor of Arabs. For many years there has been tension in Darfur over land and rights between the mostly nomadic Arabs and farmers from the Fur, Massaleit, and Zagawa communities. The government admits mobilizing "self-defense militias" following rebel attacks, but denies any links to the Janjaweed, the group accused of trying to "cleanse" the territory of black Africans. So far, it is estimated that about 380,000 people have been killed in this conflict.

In addition to the genocide in Darfur, there are also smaller ongoing conflicts between the government and peripheral rebel groups. The Beja people in northeastern Sudan are an example. On 29 January 2005, some 29 people died in a clash between supporters of the Beja Congress (BC) and Government security forces. The BC was founded in 1960 to address the needs of the Beja people, who have long complained that the GoS has neglected to address critical development issues in the region. The BC forged an alliance with the Darfur based Sudan Liberation Movement in January of last year. The BC was excluded from the talks that produced the CPA.

Acheiving Peace through Pluralistic National Identity

The CPA is an agreement between two minorities; many groups have been excluded from the peace process. While addressing the needs of the SPLM, the CPA does not address the needs of other rebel groups with similar demands such as the Sudan People's Democratic Front, the Sudan People's Defense Force, the South Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army. In addition, there are ethnic and tribal rivalries within the SPLM due to the fact that it is dominated by ethnic Dinka. There are also other southern groups in opposition to the SPLM which have grown in recent years and are supported by intellectuals and politicians both inside and outside Sudan.

The Khartoum government is treating these other periphery concerns as security problems whereas they really are politico-economic. They go to the very root of national identity. Sudan is a very large and diverse country with 90 different cultural groups and many additional different tribal groups such as the Beja, Jamala and Nubian people in the north, and the Azande, Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk people in the south. Moreover, there is even religious diversity in the South. Roman Catholic, Anglican, Coptic, and Greek Orthodox are just a few of the varieties of Christianity in the South, not to mention the diversity of indigenous religions. All of these groups have one aspiration in common: to have a platform to address their concerns and to have a role in the development of Sudan. By defining only two parameters for its national identity, Arab and Muslim, the government in Khartoum has ignored Sudan's true identity, which is multiethnic, multicultural, and multi-religious. The attempt to forge an untrue identity out of Sudan came at the expense of millions of lives.

The future of any peaceful resolution to Sudan's conflicts will have to rest in Khartoum's ability to move away from its false two-dimensional identity and embrace Sudan's true identity: an ancient land whose true beauty is found in its rich and diverse people.

Women as Instrument of Peace

Despite a cease-fire agreement and the presence of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission, widespread violence and a severe humanitarian crisis continue unabated in Darfur. What has been missing in the peace process is virtually the voice of those over half affected by the conflict?

Women have been disproportionately affected by the violence in Darfur and the subsequent humanitarian crisis. In addition to losing their husbands and sons to the conflict, they have been systematically raped and have lost their homes to burning and looting by militias from the north. Women comprise at least 75 percent of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the refugees fleeing the country. The “horrendous”stories with rape having become a way of life in the Darfur region. The Sudanese women in Internally Displaced Persons Camps have reported brutal rapes, sexual assaults, sexual slavery, and mutilation committed by male combatants. Those who survived the attacks suffered from psychological trauma, permanent physical injury, and long-term health risks, especially HIV/AIDS. In the post-conflict period, many women confront discrimination in reconstruction programs, sexual and domestic violence in refugee camps, and violence when they attempt to return to their homes.

However, women are not just victims in Darfur. Through networks, informal groups, and as leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), they are at the forefront of efforts to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, reconcile with rebel groups, and stop the rampant sexual violence against women and girls. As in other conflicts around the world, Sudanese women are integral to ensuring successful peace negotiations, providing humanitarian assistance, creating accountability, establishing security, and maintaining peace.
It is therefore urgent that relevant parties address the needs of women, support women’s peace building efforts, and include women in decision making regarding conflict resolution and reconstruction in Darfur.

Giving women a greater role in the peace process in Sudan would help stem the growing crisis in Darfur and gain a lasting peace between North and South Sudan. A number of non-governmental organizations in Sudan has implemented conflict resolution activities by women in southern Sudan and confirmed a desire by women to be involved in peacekeeping activities.

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III. How Does the Civil War Between North and South Relate to Darfur? What is going on in Darfur?

In trying to understand the complicated Sudanese situation, I have found that it is difficult to get straightforward information. However, there are many places to find more information, both on the UU-UNO website and resources given in this article. Because of the immediacy of the conflict, all organizations involved lack the luxury of hindsight and time for deep research. The more dangerous the situation is, the harder it is for journalists to have direct and accurate information. The more ignored the situation is, the less journalists report and the less knowledge the general public has in understanding the events as they happen.

Conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan is often represented as ethnic and religious tension between the Muslim North and African, Christian, or Animist South. But the situation means much more. The Khartoum government is a religious regime: an Islamist regime. It explicitly and states that it wants to engage in a process of “full Islamization” of Sudan, even though Southern Sudan is primarily Christian and Animist. In Western Sudan, all people are Muslims and yet the government has attempted to commit genocide against them, killing thousands of people. The phrases surrounding Islamization are codes for what represents of the Massaleit community in exile calls “a deeply racist policy of Arabization” in their April 1999 open letter to the international community.

-The Sudanese government always says that if there violence in Western Sudan, it is because of conflicts between tribes which have always lived there. Western Sudan is multiethnic. There have been ethnic tension and conflicts due to the difficult environment and competition for resources, especially between people who are nomadic and those who are farmers. But these conflicts have always been mediated effectively by traditional meansof peace-keeping. Because of this, Western Sudan has a history of relative peace.

-In the 1990s, Western Sudan began to explode. This is no coincidence, and did not suddenly arise out of environmental conditions that have existed for many decades and centuries. It is because of Khartoum policy. The government saw local Arab groups of civilians who were organized in a military fashion, disrupted traditional means of peace-keeping, and gave them money and weapons. Then, the government demilitarized and disarmed the non-Arab groups in Western Sudan, hoping to generate racial and ethnic conflict.

-Western Sudan has deep Islamic roots, but are viewed as African, not Arab. African identity and cultural heritages are seen as a critical threat because of the decades of war between Northern and Southern Sudan. The regime has decided that the Western Sudan must change its ethnic composition and all traditional authority must be destroyed.

In February 2003: There are two pivotal rebel movements in Darfur (Western Sudan) who take up arms to fight “discrimination and oppression” by the Sudanese government in Khartoum, after the peace talks between the Northern Sudanese government and rebel groups in Southern Sudan (not Western Sudan/Darfur) commenced prior to early 2003.

a. Sudan Liberation Army ( SLA)

b. Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)

The government’s response: The Sudanese government makes the decision to brutally eradicate all people in Western Darfur who share the same ethnicity as members of the two rebel movements

What ethnicity do these people share? The government has focused on eliminating the rebel movements and the Janjaweed through government backing has worked to exterminate the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur , as well as to a lesser extent other ethnic groups

How they attempt to eradicate these people?

• Indiscriminate aerial bombardment in Northern Darfur, as well as to a lesser level in Western and Southern Darfur
• Deployment and coordination of Janjaweed militias (see section on Janjaweed):
  who in the past in Darfur had violently clashed with farming communities in Darfur
  who utilize tactics of:
  -Mass killings in villages
  -Mass rape
  -Utter destruction of property and vast looting
  -Forced or involuntary displacement
  -Collapsing the Darfur region’s economy

In 2 years of conflict in Darfur, almost 2 million people have been displaced.

Africa Action (www.africaaction.org) estimates that 400,000 people in Darfur have died, primarily from disease and malnutrition from involuntary displacement, and from the violence, mass killings, and aerial bombardment by the Janjaweed and Sudanese government in Khartoum.

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IV. The Historically Largest Ethnic Group in Darfur: The Fur in Darfur and in Diaspora

The Sudanese government has targeted the Fur for elimination for sharing the same ethnicity as some members of rebel groups in Darfur who took up arms in February 2003 to fight “discrimination and oppression” from the Sudanese government. The name “ Darfur” itself comes from the Fur ethnic group.

CIA World Factbook map of the spread of the Fur
language in the Sudan nation.

-In 1983, the ethnic group the Fur were estimated to be about 500,000 people in Darfur. Fur societies are predominantly very traditional, and Fur villages are run by community elders. Linguistically, the Fur language is part of the Nilo-Saharan Fur branch. The Nilo-Saharan language group is composed of the African languages spoken in the upper parts of the Nile River and the Chari River, spoken by about eleven million people. The Fur language is part of the Fur branch of this language group, and has about 900,000 speakers. Fur people also may use the Arabic language to communicate with the government and Arabic neighbors, but have strongly retained their cultural and linguistic identities.

- The Fur have historically lived primarily in the mountains around Jebel Sî and Jebel Marra. However, in recent history and moved to the lower country that is west and southwest of their previous heartland. Before the outbreak of conflict in Darfur, some Fur lived across the border in Chad. If we go all the way back to the sixteenth century, their homeland was known as “ Southern Nubia.” Their deep oral traditions trace the ancient ruins of Darfur to a group known as the Torra.

-The Islamic religion was introduced to the Fur in the 1500s when Sulayman Solong became the first sultan of Darfur, decreeing Islam as the official religion, and full-scale religious conversions occurred later under Ahmad Bakr between 1682-1722 by importing teachers, building mosques, and pushing for his subjects to become Muslim. Later, in the 1700s, other sultans would consolidate the dynastic reign over Darfur. They operated a slave trade as a monopoly, and rivalry between slaves and traditional elites caused significant unrest throughout that century. Although demographically the Fur are listed as over 99% Muslim, their traditional religious practices are largely Animist.

-Until 1916, the Fur were ruled by an independent sultanate and shared significant political and cultural webs with different ethnic groups in Chad. They are primarily sedentary, cultivating agriculture in contrast to nomadic Baggara cattle herders, which we will soon discuss.

-This ties into the Janjaweed, who descend primarily from the nomadic Baggara cattle herders which are located in different areas of the Sudan. The Fur conflicted with the Baggara cattle herders in their region over extremely precious water and grazing land, especially in the Jebel Marra Mountains (a key area of the historical geography of the Fur ethnic group), creating a tragic path and linkage with the eruptions in Darfur in February 2003. Some Baggara cattle herders are originally Fur, for Fur people who raised herds of cattles could only survive if they lived like their nomadic neighbors, and historically they began to be eventually thought of as Baggara.

When have the Baggara intersected with the Fur? Settled Fur communities and migrating Baggara groups would intersect during the Baggara’s annual livestock migrations, in which animals move to the south in the dry season for water and pasture, known as marhal, move through the Central African Republic, the Bahr El Ghazal state in southern Sudan, and the Deleg-Mukjar-Shattaya region.

Resources:

-United States . Cong. Library of Congress. Sudan: A Country Study. Ed. Helen
Chapin Metz. 4th edit. vols. Washington: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1992.
-Human Rights Watch’s Briefing Paper. “Targeting the Darfur: Mass Killings in Darfur.” January 24, 2005. http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/darfur0105/

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V. Massaleit

“ …Much more than a tribal or ethnic conflict...” Representatives of the Massaleit Community in Exile, Cairo , Egypt

All information, unless cited otherwise, came from the open letter to the international community by representatives of the Massaleit Community in Exile, “The Hidden Slaughter and Ethnic Cleansing in Western Sudan,” http://www.massaleit.info/ . Photograph was taken from http://www.damanga.org/reports.html.

- The Massaleit is a second ethnic group that has been brutally targeted by the Janjaweed and the Sudanese Khartoum government. The government and Janjaweed have repeatedly massacred the Massaleit as “non-Arab civilians,” burned whole Massaleit villages to the ground, and caused an exodus of the Massaleit from their ancestral lands, as it has with many other “non-Arab” ethnic groups. The most recent census information for the Massaleit is from 1983, in which it was estimated that globally there are 250,000 Massaleit people worldwide, and 145,000 living in the Sudan. We do not know how many Massaleit people survive today ( http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_language.asp?code=MSA , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masalit .)

-Who are the Massaleit? The Massaleit live in the extreme west of Darfur on the Chad border, practicing Islam and speaking both Arabic and Massaleit. Massaleit is part of the Nilo-Saharan language branch, and part of the Maba language group, which includes languages from the Sudan , Central African Republic , and Chad . They practice cultural traditions that are unique to their ethnic group.

-Five years ago, the Sudanese government created thirty positions in the traditional Dar Massaleit area, called “ Emirs ,” and gave these positions to mostly people from Arab ethnic groups, such as the Umm Jallul Arabs. The Massaleit felt that the government was trying to undermine their community and traditional leadership roles. Effectively, the Khartoum government elevated members of indigenous Arab groups who were in the minority above the Massaleit, who were in the majority .

-People in the Massaleit community expressed their agreement and tension escalated between the Massaleit and local Arab people in their communities. Violence and hostility became common. The government then removed the governor from Western Darfur , and replaced him with a military general and put the area under de facto military rule.

-The road to racial and ethnic attacks and even genocide had been laid. First, prominent members of the Massaleit community such as members of the state council and those were well educated were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. The Janjaweed began attacking the Massaleit villages as early as August 1995. The Janjaweed would begin their attack by setting on fire every house in the village. Those who escaped were shot to death by the militias. The attacks were timed so that they coincided with the agricultural harvest. The fields were then burned to the ground before they were harvested, leaving any surviving farmers to starve to death or take refuge far away from lands of ancestry.

-In 1998 alone, the Janjaweed burned to the ground one hundred and twenty villages

-Villages that had not yet been attacked were disarmed, placed under curfew, restricted in movement, subject to mass, arrest, torture, extra-judicial killings, conscripted into the Sudanese Armed forces and sent to Southern Sudan to attack Southern rebels

-Arab youth who stayed in the Western Sudan were instructed to make sure intense violence was committed against any remaining Massaleit elderly, women, and children in the area

Pictures from refugee camps in Darfur, Western Sudan

-Ultimately, the Dar Massaleit Area was sealed off so Massaleit could no longer flee their homelands. Sudanese military helicopters were used to murder remaining Massaleit, and the campaign continues to eliminate the remaining Massaleit in Darfur .

“The situation has only continued to escalate and it has become clear that the intention of the…government is the full ethnic cleansing of the Massaleit from their ancestral homeland in Western Sudan…The Sudanese Minister of Interior…declared that the Massaleit were outlaws, opponents of the regime, and constituted a fifth column in Western Sudan in league with the anti-government rebels [from Southern Sudan]…” Representatives of the Massaleit Community in Exile, Cairo , Egypt."

-Today, the Massaleit in exile live in refugee camps in Chad . Few or none receive assistance and protection from international refugee organizations. Many starve to death. The Sudanese government urges Chad to forcibly bring the Massaleit refugees back to Sudan , and Chad attempts to cooperate with Sudan and return the Massaleit back to Sudan . Many who live in exile believe that they will be murdered if they return back to the Sudan because of their ethnicity.

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Janjaweed and Armed Militias

Sources: Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy:
http://www.damanga.org/gang_rape.htm
http://www.damanga.org/press_11_19_04.html
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2004/07/06/opinion/20040707_KRIS_1.html

In just one incident, Government aligned Janjaweed militia attacked and ganged raped five women on Wednesday, November 10, 2005, according to three different sources who communicated with the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy during the past week.

 -Who are the Janjaweed? The Janjaweed are different militia groups in the Sudan . Like many people in Darfur , they practice Muslim. However, they are considered ethnically “Arab” by the Sudanese government, and many Janjaweed are from the historically nomadic Baggara ethnic group in the Sudan . Idris Abu Moussa, a 26-year-old Sudanese farmer, states: "They came at 4 a.m. on horseback, on camels, in vehicles, with two helicopters overhead ..."they killed 50 people in my village. My father, grandmother, uncle and two brothers were all killed."..."They don't want any blacks left."

This is a picture from one of the few photographs from the genocide. Left: This murdered man, like many other Janjaweed victims, was castrated and shot in the head. Right: This Sudanese child was massacred in Hamada , Sudan . The butt of a rifle was used to rip open his head. Photographs are from Darfurgenocide.org (“a genocide we can stop”).

-The Janjaweed originated from the government in response to the rebel movements in Southern Sudan, and have had much better weapons and mobility than the movements in Sudan . For many years, they wrecked havoc on countless ethnic groups and communities in Sudan , not simply fighting the rebel soldiers but destroying countless communities in Sudan and enslaving Southern Sudanese people.

-Mohamed Adam Yahya, with the Massaleit Community in Exile at a vigil at Duke University in North Carolina , provided an emotionally-charged personal reflection, exclaiming his horror at the genocide. “Sometimes we feel we are not human beings because if we were, we would be protected,” Yahya said. Instead, the international community “doesn't take any action to help. We need serious action to be taken,” he said.

Above: Photographed by Nicholas Kristof. Zahra Abdel Karim's husband and her sons were murdered by the Janjaweed. After the Janjaweed were done killing them, Zahra and her sisters were taken to being gang-raped. After being gang-raped, the Janjaweed killed all of Zahra's sisters. She was the only one who survived. Her clothes were taken and she was left naked, with a mark on her leg to brand her. Karim is on the photograph on the left. On the right, this is where she now lives as a refugee on a tree in the Chad border. She created this shelter herself, and this photograph was taken when the season of rain was beginning. The tent offers little shelter from these rains.

-Attacks were well planned and directed by the Sudanese military governor of the area, instated by the Sudanese government in Khartoum
-Members of the Janjaweed were not even remotely regional, coming from places such as Syria, Libya, Algeria, Chad, and areas in Sudan that were far away (for instance, one Janjaweed commander in the militia was killed and then revealed to be a colonel in the Sudanese government's army)
-It was documented that the Janjaweed attacks on the Massaleit used Toyota Land cruisers, horses, and mounted machine guns

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Africa Action Talking Points on How to Stop Genocide in Darfur

www.africaaction.org, retrieved on January 9, 2006

Nothing short of international intervention will stop the genocide in Darfur. Africa Action believes 7that the U.S. must do everything necessary to secure a United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution authorizing a multinational intervention force, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, to stop the genocide and protect humanitarian efforts in Darfur.

1. What is Genocide?

The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Article II describes the two elements that constitute the crime of genocide:

(i) the mental element , meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such", and
(ii) the physical element which includes five types of violence described in sections [a] through [e] as follows: [a] Killing members of the group; [b] Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [c] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; [d] Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [e] Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

2. What is happening in Darfur is Genocide

(i) Genocidal Intent: The intent of the Sudanese government to destroy, in whole or in part, three African ethnic communities (the Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit), is clear from at least four categories of evidence: [a] Documentary evidence; [b] Legal inference based upon the systematic perpetration of culpable acts directed against specific targeted groups; [c] Testimony of witnesses who are survivors of the genocide; and [d] Government efforts to eliminate all traces of mass graves.

[a] Documentary Evidence: Sudanese Government documents obtained and released by Human Rights Watch, make clear government intent through its actions of arming, equipping and transporting Arab militias to destroy, in part, targeted groups. In violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, the government has withheld other documents requested by the United Nations such as flight logs for aircraft (planes and helicopter gunships) used by the government in Darfur, as well as the minutes of meetings of government security officials on Darfur . Such documents would likely provide further documentary evidence of genocidal intent. According to The New York Times on February 23, 2005, African Union observers have also uncovered a document that indicates a policy of genocide on the part of the government.

[b] International legal precedent (from the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia ) holds that genocidal intent can be inferred from the context of the perpetration of culpable acts when they are systematically directed against a group. For more than two years the government has established a pattern of atrocities including mass killings, mass rapes, bombings, burning and pillaging villages, and destruction of water wells and crops, systematically directed against the targeted groups.

[c] The testimony of survivors of genocide in Darfur consistently reports that the perpetrators of the atrocities frequently and clearly stated their intent to destroy these groups as part of a broader government-inspired effort.

[d] According to witnesses and documentary evidence, the government of Sudan has sought to erase all trace of large mass graves of executed civilians in Darfur . It has prevented researchers from obtaining forensic evidence from such sites.

(ii) Genocidal Actions: In Darfur during the past three years, the physical acts of violence have included all five categories of violence listed in the International Genocide Convention. These acts have resulted in the deaths of more than 400,000 people*.

The following letters correspond to the five categories of genocidal violence listed under the legal definition of genocide at the beginning of this document.

[a] more than 200,000 people have been killed by government forces and militias from 2003 to the end of 2004, and the killing continues;

[b] bodily and mental harm has been inflicted upon thousands of women and young girls raped by soldiers and militias. Such physical and mental harm will continue to affect these women and their families for years to come; ;

[c] an additional 200,000 lives have been lost through the deliberate destruction of homes, crops and water resources and the physical displacement of more than two million people which have resulted in conditions of famine and disease epidemics, both in inaccessible areas and in camps for displaced people;

[d] the killing of pregnant women; and

[e] the use of rape as a weapon of genocide as many perpetrators have stated that their intent is to change the ethnic identity of the child conceived by rape.

3. The Humanitarian Crisis

4. The U.S. Government Acknowledges Genocide, But Fails to Act

5. The UN Acknowledges Crimes Against Humanity, But Fails to Act

6. The African Union Cannot Respond Alone

7. What is needed is an Urgent International Intervention

8. What the U.S. Should do at the United Nations

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Resources:

Above: An example of what
shelter may now look like in Darfur .
Save the Children photograph.
www.savethechildren.org

-Relief Organizations:

Mercy Corps: The Mercy Corps provides critical humanitarian assistance to 89,000 refugees in Darfur, Western Sudan . Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. The agency's programs currently reach 7 million people in more than 35 countries. Since 1979 , Mercy Corps has provided over $1 billion in assistance to people in 81 nations. Mercy Corps is a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Portland , Seattle , Cambridge , Washington , D.C. and Edinburgh , Scotland . 92% of money goes directly to administration of programs, a very high amount, and 8% goes to administrations.
https://ssl.charityweb.net/mercycorps/giftbasket/donation.htm?Custom15=wm&Custom16=1.1

United Nations' Children Fund (UNICEF) :
Current UNICEF Chad activities to assist both Sudanese refugees and local Chadian communities include: distribution of blankets; measles vaccination and Vitamin A campaigns; delivery of school-in-a-box kits; supply of Arabic school books from UNICEF Sudan to support education activities; provision of basic school materials; distribution of family water kits; delivery of mid-wife kits; supply of therapeutic milk; hygiene education; monitoring of separated children; water and sanitation activities; and, the supply of recreational materials for play.
http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=iuI1LdP0G&b=80128

Care: Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere. Care has an overwhelming twenty-eight projects in Sudan , which include education, food security, reproductive health, water and sanitation, and much more. http://www.careusa.org/careswork/countryprofiles/98.asp
https://donate.care.org/05/170420990000/?source=170670080000
Outside the U.S.- call 404-681-2552
U.S.- 1-800-521-CARE ext. 999

Geography:
-Peters' Projection Map of Africa:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PetersProjection.html
-Map of Sudan:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/africa/sudan/sudan.htm
-Maps related to Khartoum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum
-Map of Southern Sudan
http://www.reliefweb.int/mapc/afr_ne/cnt/sdn/sdns.html
-Map of Darfur:
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/darfur/map.htm

Books:
The Lost Boys of Sudan : An American Refugee Experience. Marx Bixler.
Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to
Freedom in America . Francis Bok and Edward Tivnan.
Slave. Mende Nazer, and Damien Lewis.
Lost Boy No More: A True Story of Survival and Salvation. Abraham Nhial and DiAnn Mills.
War and Faith in Sudan . Gabriel Meyer and Jim Nicholls.
Darfur : The Ambiguous Genocide. Gerard Prunier.

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“Slavery is not history.”

Slogan of the American Anti-Slavery Group, a non-profit organization working to abolish modern-day slavery around the world, focusing primarily on systems of chattel slavery in Sudan and Mauritania www.iabolish.org

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