[wvns] Darfur in Historical Context

Darfur, the new American-French Protectorate
By Abu Iskandar as-Sudani.

Translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf
Damascus

Intro to the translation by FAV editors:

Most everything that has appeared in English about the situation in
Darfur, the Sudan - indeed particularly in "progressive" publications
in English – for the last year or so has related one basic "story."

According to this story the Sudanese government, using armed
militiamen, has been massacring Black African Muslim peasants in
Darfur, trying to drive them out of the country because of their race.
This story has been presented as a humanitarian and political crisis
that requires urgent intervention by the "great powers."

Indeed, the position taken by many confused "leftwing" publications
has been that the US government is "not doing enough" to impose
"civilization" on the Sudan. These publications, dazzled by the talk
about a 'humanitarian disaster' and horrified by the talk of "racist
genocide" have thus turned themselves into cheerleaders for further
imperialist expansion.

As people familiar with the situation in the Sudan are aware, the
reality is markedly different from the propaganda version of "racist
genocide" presented by the western media.

But the vast gulf between reality, on the one hand, and the specter of
"racist genocide" conjured up by the western media, on the other, is
not a matter of simple ignorance or misinterpretation of data. The
disconnect between western media myth and the reality on the ground is
what we have seen when the west grabs hold of an issue to make use of
it for its own ends.

What are those imperialist aims in the Sudan and how does the "racist
genocide" story serve them?

Fundamentally, the situation in Darfur cannot be viewed separately
from the unfolding Zio-American plan to break-up the Arab states along
the lines of the strategy for a "Greater Middle East," in which
imperialism and Zionism latch onto sectarian, ethnic, and other
sub-national identities to try to change forever the Arab identity of
the region and to fragment and weaken the Arab states which have now
outlived their purpose, as far as imperialism and Zionism are concerned.

In 1916, British and French imperialism drew up the notorious
Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing the Arab Nation into the small states
that we know today, and making room for a Jewish Zionist colony in
Palestine as an obstacle to any Arab effort at genuine
self-determination and unity.

Today, a new Sykes-Picot arrangement is being devised for the whole
region under the signboard of the "Greater Middle East" strategy. A
decentralized, federal Iraq made up of three distinct entities –
Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shi`i Arab – is one link in that chain.
Driving a wedge along sectarian lines between the Maronites in Lebanon
and the Sunni, Shi`i, Druze and other groups in that state and between
Lebanon and Syria are another link in that chain. Attempts to incite
violence between Muslims and Copts in Egypt, and between Arabs and
Berbers in North Africa follow the same pattern of "divide and
conquer" which is the essence of the American "Greater Middle East"
strategy that masquerades as a drive for "humanitarianism" and
"democracy."

Far from solving problems, this approach is a formula for disaster for
the local people, for once governments are organized along sectarian
lines, it's only a matter of time before tensions explode over shares
and prerogatives – as they did in Lebanon in the mid-1970s.

But if ethnic and sectarian divisions spell disaster for the people
concerned, they are a time-tested arrangement guaranteed to facilitate
imperialist and Zionist domination and "management" of the region.

We oppose the strategy for a "Greater Middle East" because it is
clearly a Zio-American imperialist plan for hegemony in the Arab
Region that is based on two pillars:

1) A cultural pillar: changing the identity of the region from
Arab-Islamic into a mosaic of mutually exclusive mini-identities, and

2) A geopolitical pillar, breaking up Arab states, especially the
larger ones, into mini-fragments to ensure that "Israel" dominates the
region as the "biggest fish" in the "Middle Eastern" pond.

In the Sudan, as in Iraq, imperialism and Zionism are deliberately
playing the "minorities" card to achieve this goal. And not only in
Sudan and Iraq! The rest of the Arab World is supposed to follow.
Yugoslavia in Europe was just a rehearsal for what will come in the
Arab World. And just as there were some fools in the Arab world who
actually thought America loved the Muslims in Bosnia, so today there
are confused and deluded people who imagine that America and the
Zionists are now concerned over a "humanitarian disaster" in Darfur –
a "disaster" it turns out, which very largely is a product of their
propaganda!

As is evident from the following article taken from the Palestinian
magazine al-Hadaf, the ethnic and tribal makeup of Darfur is
bewildering and many local and regional forces have had a hand in
creating the situation that is now the subject of international
"concern." But the principal contradiction is that between
Zio-imperialism on the one hand and the people of the Arab region on
the other, as the one strives to divide and conquer, while the other
struggles for its self-determination, unity, and integrity.

===

Text of the translation:

For a long time the talk of war in the Sudan has related to the long
struggle in the south of the country, a struggle that many thought was
without end. But just as a formula for ending that conflict by
peaceful means seemed at hand, there was a sudden and dramatic
escalation in the events in Darfur – in the west of the country this
time – according to the saying, `one war breeds another.' Quickly, as
a result of massive and very controversial US and European media
coverage, Darfur became the background and focus of increasingly
inflammatory statements in Europe and America in which western leaders
expressed their "outrage" over the inhuman situation in the area and
over the great danger that they said threatened millions of Sudanese
refugees.

Darfur: history, location, and climate.

Darfur is located in the southwest of the Arab region of the Sudan.
Its history has been much like that of other regions in central
Africa. Numerous kingdoms and sultanates arose there over a period of
some 5,000 years. Eventually a series of Arab and Islamic kingdoms
took shape there, the most prominent being the Sultanate of Darfur,
the foundations of which were laid by Sultan Sulayman I (1445-1475
CE). After him came a succession of leaders until in 1640 Sultan
Sulayman Sulun, the most outstanding of the Darfur Sultans, came to
the throne. Sulayman Sulun was steeped in Arab and Islamic culture
and during his rule the Arab and Islamic identity of Darfur deepened
as trade and educational exchange with the rest of the Arab world
expanded and interpersonal connections between Darfur and the
surrounding Arab and Islamic cultural centers in the Hijaz, Egypt,
Syria, and Arab North Africa expanded. This era was discussed by the
Arab historian Muhammad ibn `Umar at-Tunisi (1789-1857) in his book
"Tashhidh al-Adhhan bi-Sirat Bilad al-`Arab wa-as-Sudan.")

Like all the Arab regions, Darfur was a stage on which colonialist
powers battled each other as they swept over northern Africa,
particularly after the Turks were able to occupy the area under the
Albanian Khedive Isma`il of Egypt in October 1874, whose army then
occupied al-Fashir, the capital of Darfur. Far from bringing
stability to the area, the arrival of the invaders only aroused the
hostility of the native population and the Darfur people played an
active role in the resistance to the Turks and British as part of the
revolution of the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad. `Abdallah at-Ta`ishi, the
Mahdi's "Khalifah" or successor, who took over as leader of the
independent Sudan when the Mahdi died in June 1885, was a native of
Darfur. In the last years of the nineteenth century as imperialism
was completing its division of the world, the British returned to
seize control over the Upper Nile by conquering the Sudan and killing
the Khalifah `Abdallah in battle in 1899. The British occupied Darfur
by fire and sword and the region became another province of the
colonial Sudan until independence was proclaimed in the Sudan on 1
January 1956.

Military geography: the Darfur battleground.

The stage on which the struggle in Darfur is taking place is
characterized by the following:

1. Natural conditions. There are four main factors at work.

a. Topography. The soil throughout most of Darfur is sandy.
There are deserts in the north of Darfur. In the center and south are
lowlands, with the Jabal Marrah mountain peaks in the west of Darfur
standing out more than 10 thousand feet high as a major elevated
landmark in the region's topography.

b. Water Resources. There are no rivers in northern Darfur, only
in the central and southern parts of the region, and most of them in
the south. There one also finds numerous wide dry riverbeds that fill
with water during the rainy season.

c. Vegetation. Grassy lowlands and grazing areas are located in
the central part of Darfur. The south of Darfur has heavy year-round
jungle and thick undergrowth.

d. Climate. The average temperature is high in northern Darfur,
moderate in the south, and lower than average in the Jabal Marrah area
in the west of the region. Similarly there is little or no rainfall
in northern Darfur. But the average amount of rainfall increases as
we head to the south, where the rainy season accounts for six months
of every year.

2. Social features. The social makeup is
extremely complex. The population of Darfur is about 6 million
people. They have a high birthrate due to extensive practice of
polygamy among the various tribes of the region. The following
characteristics may be observed among the residents of Darfur:

Ethnicity. There are 95 major and minor tribes in Darfur, among them
23 main large tribes, the rest being small. There is considerable
intermixing and intermarriage among the region's tribes. It is
therefore difficult to point to any specific ethnic features unique to
the different tribes, other than some superficial differences.

Religion. One hundred percent of the residents of Darfur are Sunni
Muslims. The an-Najati Sufi order is widespread among the residents
of Darfur. The tribes in the region who are of "African" origin are
considered the more zealous in their practice of Islam than the other,
"non-African" tribes.

Language. The residents of Darfur can be divided into two groups
linguistically. About 50 percent of the tribes speak Arabic as their
mother tongue. The other 50 percent speak regional dialects, but at
the same time use Arabic as a second language. On that basis, these
tribes are considered "African." The residents of Darfur who speak
Arabic as their mother tongue are concentrated in the interior areas
of Darfur. The tribes that speak Arabic as their second language are
to be found in the border regions adjacent to Chad and the Central
African Republic.

3. Economic characteristics. There are two types of natural
resource in Darfur. Surface resources, which is to say agricultural
crops and animals and the vast pasturelands that extend throughout the
lowlands of the area. The second type of resources are those buried
underground, specifically oil, iron, and copper – the fourth largest
deposit of copper in the world – in addition to deposits of
high-purity uranium, of which it recently was learned that they
represent one of the three largest such deposits on earth. Because of
the weakness of development in the region, it has remained largely
without an infrastructure, a factor inhibiting its integration into
the economy of the Sudan. Economic activity is therefore of a rural
character, as a result of which 85 percent of the population are
either nomadic herdsmen or rural farmers.

4. Political characteristics. On the basis of the current
federal administrative division of the Sudan, the Region of Darfur is
currently made up of three states (Wilayat): North Darfur, West
Darfur, and South Darfur. Each of the three Darfur states has its own
Legislative Assembly and its own Governor with a cabinet of state
ministers. These officials constitute the executive authority in each
state. Thus the status of each of these three states is the same as
that of all the 26 states making up the different regions of the
Sudan. They enjoy a large degree of self rule, functioning as mini
governments. They are tied to the Federal Government in al-Khartoum
on the basis of the Law of Federal Rule, whose provisions distinguish
between the executive authority of the states, the legislative
authority of the states, and the matters covered by the sovereignty of
the Federal Government. Each state, in turn, is divided into three
administrative districts (Muhafazat). Thus, speaking of Darfur's
internal borders, the region lies adjacent to the Bahr al-Ghazal in
the southern Sudan, to North and South Kurdufan in the central Sudan,
and to the Northern Region. The states of Darfur have international
borders with Libya, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

A study of the modern history of the area reveals that political
activity in Darfur began as a part of the Sudanese patriotic movement
in the time of the struggle against the British colonialists. There
were various Sudanese political parties represented in Darfur,
specifically: the al-Ummah Party, led by Sadiq al-Mahdi which had the
support of about 70 percent of the region's population; the Islamic
Movement, which claimed 20 percent of the people as supporters. Ten
percent of the region's population supported the regional Darfur
Struggle Front, which appeared in 1964 as a political movement led by
Ahmad Ibrahim Durayj with a program that consisted of economic and
social development for the region. Later, Durayj joined the al-Ummah
Party and became the leader of the parliamentary opposition bloc led
by the al-Ummah Party during the second period of democracy during the
second half of the 1960s. The population of Darfur remained heavily
influenced by the al-Ummah Party and the Islamic Movement. Durayj has
now returned to political life once again, founding a political
organization that he calls the Sudanese Democratic Federal Coalition
which proclaims four political goals: Ending the civil war;
Establishment of a federal or confederative political system in the
country; Abiding by the principle of non-discrimination among
citizens; Separation of religious from political institutions.
Durayj, however, rejects the idea of self-determination for the region
because that would threaten the unity of the Sudan, and he also
rejects the use of military means to solve the crisis, regarding that
as ineffective.

Causes of Conflict in Darfur.

The natural and human environment in Darfur is characterized by a
group of factors that act as active instigators of conflict in the region.

1. Natural instigators. The elevated region of Jabal Marrah,
which is characterized by hard-to-travel, rough, rocky heights and is
covered by thick trees and brush, presents an ideal natural
environment for the establishment of guerrilla bases. Also conducive
to this is the fact that Jabal Marrah is well watered and offers fruit
and vegetables year round. In addition, the residents of Jabal Marrah
are entirely of the al-Fur tribe, so that every guerrilla movement
that gains the support of the clans of the al-Fur will have ready
permission to set up bases in this strategic area. This is what the
Sudanese Liberation Army movement, most of whose members are of the
al-Fur tribe, has done. In addition in the south of Darfur are the
thick jungles and undergrowth, the rivers and deep, rocky riverbeds
where every guerrilla movement can find ample room to maneuver and
move about. Northern Darfur is taken up with desert, which greatly
facilitates maneuver and rapid movement. Rebel movements in Darfur
have used four-wheel drive Landcruisers to get around and the desert
areas have greatly helped them advance and move around quickly,
penetrating deep into the interior of the region from the north,
allowing them to go around and then mount surprise attacks on targets
from the east – the direction from which no one expects attacks to come.

2. Economic instigators. The weak economic development and lack
of infrastructure of the area, as well as the dependence of the vast
majority of the population on agriculture and herding for their
livelihood have resulted in the virtual economic isolation of the
region and its non-integration into the Sudanese economy. The lack of
infrastructure means that normal economic ties with the rest of the
country are weak, but at the same time smuggling along the borders is
very widespread and has facilitated a rise in corruption, chaos, and
confusion, all of which further drains the resources of the region.

3. Social instigators. The complex ethnic and tribal makeup of
the area, in which half the residents are herdsmen and the other half
farmers, means that clashes can easily and frequently break out and
then quickly turn into tribal feuds which political movements rush to
take advantage of, mobilizing and politicizing the clashes. Another
social factor that promotes conflict are the nomadic tribes that cross
unchecked over the borders between the Sudan, Libya, Chad, and the
Central Africa Republic. This has greatly promoted a lack of social
order and control as members of rebel political groups move about with
consummate ease between the Sudan and the other countries in the area.
In addition, members of the tribes that regularly cross the borders
from the neighboring countries can readily take part in fighting
inside the Sudan.

4. Political instigators. Numerous factors can be cited here,
including the lack of authority in the region due to its vast expanses
and remoteness from the capital and the central government and the
fact that it is wide open to influxes from neighboring countries. To
that can be added the fact that for many years the central government
has been preoccupied with the civil war in the south of the country.
All these factors combined to prevent the central government from
extending its control over the region. As a result, for the past 50
years, Darfur has been a refuge for armed movements active in the
neighboring countries, in particular Chadian groups. Chadian
President Hissen Habré formed his army in Darfur, launched his
movement there, and went on to seize power in Chad. Current Chadian
President Idriss Déby did the same thing, beginning with the forming
of an armed movement on Darfur territory. As a result, every regime
in Chad keeps its eyes wide open to the possibility of a threat to its
authority arising on the territory of Darfur. With respect to the
administrative political system, Jaafar an-Numayri's decision to
dissolve the system of local rule by tribal leaders, and replace it
with a civil system, had negative results. The tribal rulers were not
ready, at that time at least, to set up a civil system. It was not
possible to organize herdsmen in trade unions or in the Councils of
the Union of the Working People. As a result, the system of tribal
control broke apart to be replaced by chaos and total disorder in
social life. Furthermore, Sudanese political parties have tended to
mobilize tribal and ethnic groups, drawing strength from their tribal
leaders as they seek to settle political scores and feuds with the
civil and military rulers of the country. As a result, negative types
of divisive mobilization have spread throughout the region at the
expense of the interests of the Sudan as a whole, and this in turn has
reinforced feelings of political marginalization in Darfur. For their
part, various Sudanese regimes have also committed errors that pushed
matters to the brink of disaster in the region. Numerous arbitrary
decrees have been taken in al-Khartoum and then imposed on the people
of Darfur by brute force, in particular in the drawing of the
boundaries of the districts and states within Darfur and in the
appointment of officials – none of which was done in consultation with
local popular figures. The division of Darfur itself into three
states was one such arbitrary decision that split up several tribes
into different states. As a result, the Fur tribe, the largest in the
region, raised the banner of rebellion against the activities of
central government.

5. Military and Security Instigators. One of the most important
of these factors has been the spilling over of armed conflicts from
bordering countries into Darfur. The escalation of the civil war in
Chad, for example, led to the spread of weapons in large quantities in
Darfur. Chadian militamen and individuals fled across the border into
Darfur to use its territory as fixed bases for launching attacks back
into Chad and as a staging area where they could maneuver and carry
out attacks from advantageous directions. Chadian rebels also fought
one another, settling political and military scores on the territory
of Darfur. Darfur was also an operational area for the Islamic
Brigades, a force of some five brigades set up by Libya during the
time of its war with Chad, and which received support from the
Sudanese government of Sadiq al-Mahdi. When the Libyan war with Chad
ended, the Brigades – most of whom were recruited from Darfur – and
their military equipment and armaments remained in Darfur. Along
similar lines, when the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed at the
end of the civil war in the Central African Republic in March 2003,
all the armed forces of the regime fled to Darfur with their arms and
military equipment. Not to be out done, a succession of Sudanese
governments in al-Khartoum recruited and armed their own tribal
militias in various parts of the region. The government of Sadiq
al-Mahdi created the al-Maraheel militia out of loyalists to its
regime in the south of Darfur, a force of about 70,000 fighters, and
equipped them with arms and materiel. The current government created
and supported the Peoples Defense Forces in Darfur, a militia of about
100,000 fighters. The Arab tribes in Darfur created the Janjawid
militias – totaling some 70,000 fighters. Against the backdrop of all
this militarization, Darfur became a hotbed for foreign forces, a
regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of
mysterious origin, and a warren for foreign organizations operating
under the cover of "humanitarian aid agencies."

The Dynamics of the Struggle in Darfur.

Between the year 1956, when the Sudan gained its independence, and the
year 2000 about 48 armed conflicts were fought in Darfur; sort of
small civil wars. The largest of those conflicts, in terms of
intensity and the number of casualties, took place from 1980 until
2000. Those conflicts can be described as:

1. Arab-Arab tribal conflicts, the most prominent of which was
that between the Bani Hulbah and the ar-Ruzayqan in 1982.

2. Arab-African tribal conflicts. Five such conflicts took
place, the most prominent among them being the feud between the al-Fur
tribe and a group of Arab tribes in 1987.

3. African-African tribal conflicts. About eight such conflicts
took place, and these were the most violent of the conflicts in the
province in terms of intensity and number of casualties.

4. One conflict that was exceptional in which one Arab tribe and
one African tribe joined forces against another tribe. This took
place in 1983 when the Arab az-Ziyadiyah tribe joined with the African
al-Barti tribe in a war against the al-Kababish Arabs.

It is noteworthy that about 80 percent of the conflicts took place in
southern Darfur and the intensity and casualty figures in those
conflicts increased during the annual dry seasons as the herding
tribes from the north of Darfur moved south to the greener areas in
the south, raiding the agricultural areas and seizing access to water.

The role of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of the Sudan led
by John Garang.

From the beginning, Garang and his movement sought to benefit from the
crisis in Darfur by transferring their struggle from the south towards
the north of the country. Garang's first attempts in this direction
took place in 1991 when Garang teamed up with Dawud Yahya Bulad, one
of the scions of the Sultans of the al-Fur tribe, to put together a
military campaign massing 10,000 fighters who marched from the south
of the Sudan north along the border with the Central African Republic
and Chad in a drive to reach the Jabal Marrah area where they would
build base areas and launch a guerrilla war in the western part of the
Sudan. Sudanese government forces, however, intercepted the fighters
in southern Darfur before they could reach Jabal Marrah, and
completely wiped them out, crushing the force and killing their
commander, Dawud Yahya Bulad. Garang continued his attempts, however,
managing to unite again with elements in the al-Fur tribe who formed
the Sudan Liberation Army which is considered a carbon copy of
Garang's Popular Movement for the Liberation of the Sudan in terms of
their armament, internal order, program, and slogans. Garang has been
seen on Jabal Marrah among the Sudan Liberation Army soldiers dozens
of times. Garang's helicopter has been observed taking off from areas
under his control in the south of the Sudan and landing in areas
controlled by the Sudan Liberation Army in the Jabal al-Marrah
mountains. The last such flight was observed on 21 March 2005, that
is, after the peace agreement – proving that Garang's movement,
despite the negotiations and agreements, is continuing to pursue its
own hidden agenda.

Besides Garang and his movement, the dynamics of the conflict in the
area involve the negative activities of the militias that were formed
in Darfur. Although successive Sudanese governments created these
loyalist militias with the aim of keeping peace and order in the
province, the leaders of these groups have used their forces to pursue
other aims, employing them in tribal feuds, in plundering smaller
tribes, in seizing control of fertile lands and water sources, all in
a region that is largely outside the control of the central
government, turning Darfur into a zone of indiscriminate violence.

External foreign involvement in the region has remained one of the
main factors behind the dynamic of conflict in Darfur. A state like
"Israel" could not find a better place than Darfur in which to operate
and spread its poison. It has not been slow or hesitant to exploit
the opportunities presented by the situation in the province. The
Zionists provided military training on their bases in Eritrea. They
have strengthened their relations and ties with the Chadian regime,
making use of them for direct transport of weapons into Darfur.

The United States had been using the problem of the southern Sudan as
an excuse to bring pressure on the country. But as soon as a peace
agreement between the government in al-Khartoum and Garang's movement
began to crystallize, the US surprised everyone by effortlessly
transferring its concerns from the south to Darfur as it continued its
practice of pressuring the Sudanese regime. Many believe that the
transfer of America's focus from the south to Darfur was caused by the
fact that the conflict in the south appeared to have reached a
stalemate, with a local balance of power – or balance of violence. In
that situation if the US had persisted along its accustomed course, it
might even have found itself obtaining results that were the opposite
of what it wanted. Washington therefore had to look for some new
spark that could ignite flames of conflict in the Sudan, and it found
the object of its desires in the Darfur problem. That way the
Americans could continue doing what they had got used to doing, only
now with a new vantage point and with new sharper and more modern tools.

It is clear that there is an "Israeli" – American – West European
accord at work in Darfur with the aim of rescuing the plan for
splitting up the Sudan and restructuring it within the framework of
the new so-called "Greater Middle East" strategy which would give the
American Administration and "Israel" control of the agricultural,
petroleum, and mineral resources of the country and facilitating their
plunder of its uranium deposits, while leaving some crumbs to keep
their friends Britain and France happy – countries that have grown
very agreeable to America's plans throughout the Arab Region and Africa.

Finally, it should be observed that all the international powers have
become embroiled in the Darfur conflict. "Israel" and the United
States have become active on the ground in the region. None of this
would have happened if the Sudanese government had not followed the
strategy of trying to hide the conflict, not recognizing the
ramifications of the symbols and practices of violence in the region.
It would also not have happened if the opposition parties had not
recruited tribal and ethnic groups in Darfur for use in settling their
scores.

It appears that the latest UN Security Council resolutions have placed
Darfur entirely under international tutelage, whether the Sudanese
parties like it or not. Darfur is on the verge of becoming an
American-French protectorate – run from behind the scenes by the
hidden hands of "Israel," which has opened offices for itself in the
refugee camps in Chad, and whose cabinet held a special session solely
to deal with a discussion of the Darfur crisis. All this is going on
at a time when many people in the Arab world are just now wondering,
"where is that Darfur place, anyway?"

===

5 Truths About Darfur
By Emily Wax - waxe @ washpost.com
The Washington Post's East Africa bureau chief

KOU KOU ANGARANA, Chad

Heard all you need to know about Darfur? Think again. Three years
after a government-backed militia began fighting rebels and residents
in this region of western Sudan, much of the conventional wisdom
surrounding the conflict -- including the religious, ethnic and
economic factors that drive it -- fails to match the realities on the
ground. Tens of thousands have died and some 2.5 million have been
displaced, with no end to the conflict in sight. Here are five truths
to challenge the most common misconceptions about Darfur:

1- NEARLY EVERYONE IS MUSLIM

Early in the conflict, I was traveling through the desert expanses of
rebel-held Darfur when, amid decapitated huts and dead livestock, our
SUV roared up to an abandoned green and white mosque, riddled with
bullets, its windows shattered.

In my travels, I've seen destroyed mosques all over Darfur. The few
men left in the villages shared the same story: As government Antonov
jets dropped bombs, Janjaweed militia members rode in on horseback and
attacked the town's mosque -- usually the largest structure in town.
The strange thing, they said, was that the attackers were Muslim, too.
Darfur is home to some of Sudan's most devout Muslims, in a country
where 65 percent of the population practices Islam, the official state
religion.

A long-running but recently pacified war between Sudan's north and
south did have religious undertones, with the Islamic Arab-dominated
government fighting southern Christian and animist African rebels over
political power, oil and, in part, religion.

"But it's totally different in Darfur," said Mathina Mydin, a
Malaysian nurse who worked in a clinic on the outskirts of Nyala, the
capital of South Darfur. "As a Muslim myself, I wanted to bring the
sides together under Islam. But I quickly realized this war had
nothing to do with religion."

2- EVERYONE IS BLACK

Although the conflict has also been framed as a battle between Arabs
and black Africans, everyone in Darfur appears dark-skinned, at least
by the usual American standards. The true division in Darfur is
between ethnic groups, split between herders and farmers. Each tribe
gives itself the label of "African" or "Arab" based on what language
its members speak and whether they work the soil or herd livestock.
Also, if they attain a certain level of wealth, they call themselves Arab.

Sudan melds African and Arab identities. As Arabs began to dominate
the government in the past century and gave jobs to members of Arab
tribes, being Arab became a political advantage; some tribes adopted
that label regardless of their ethnic affiliation. More recently,
rebels have described themselves as Africans fighting an Arab
government. Ethnic slurs used by both sides in recent atrocities have
riven communities that once lived together and intermarried.

"Black Americans who come to Darfur always say, 'So where are the
Arabs? Why do all these people look black?' " said Mahjoub Mohamed
Saleh, editor of Sudan's independent Al-Ayam newspaper. "The bottom
line is that tribes have intermarried forever in Darfur. Men even have
one so-called Arab wife and one so-called African. Tribes started
labeling themselves this way several decades ago for political
reasons. Who knows what the real bloodlines are in Darfur?"

3- IT'S ALL ABOUT POLITICS

Although analysts have emphasized the racial and ethnic aspects of the
conflict in Darfur, a long-running political battle between Sudanese
President Omar Hassan Bashir and radical Islamic cleric Hassan
al-Turabi may be more relevant.

A charismatic college professor and former speaker of parliament,
Turabi has long been one of Bashir's main political rivals and an
influential figure in Sudan. He has been fingered as an extremist;
before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Turabi often referred to Osama bin
Laden as a hero. More recently, the United Nations and human rights
experts have accused Turabi of backing one of Darfur's key rebel
groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, in which some of his top
former students are leaders.

Because of his clashes with Bashir, Turabi is usually under house
arrest and holds forth in his spacious Khartoum villa for small crowds
of followers and journalists. But diplomats say he still mentors
rebels seeking to overthrow the government.

"Darfur is simply the battlefield for a power struggle over Khartoum,"
said Ghazi Suleiman, a Sudanese human rights lawyer. "That's why the
government hit back so hard. They saw Turabi's hand, and they want to
stay in control of Sudan at any cost."

4- THIS CONFLICT IS INTERNATIONAL

China and Chad have played key roles in the Darfur conflict.
In 1990, Chad's Idriss Deby came to power by launching a military
blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrowing President Hissan Habre. Deby
hails from the elite Zaghawa tribe, which makes up one of the Darfur
rebel groups trying to topple the government. So when the conflict
broke out, Deby had to decide whether to support Sudan or his tribe.
He eventually chose his tribe.

Now the Sudanese rebels have bases in Chad; I interviewed them in
towns full of Darfurians who tried to escape the fighting. Meanwhile,
Khartoum is accused of supporting Chad's anti-Deby rebels, who have a
military camp in West Darfur. (Sudan's government denies the
allegations.) Last week, bands of Chadian rebels nearly took over the
capital, N'Djamena. When captured, some of the rebels were carrying
Sudanese identification.

Meanwhile, Sudan is China's fourth-biggest supplier of imported oil,
and that relationship carries benefits. China, which holds veto power
in the U.N. Security Council, has said it will stand by Sudan against
U.S. efforts to slap sanctions on the country and in the battle to
force Sudan to replace the African Union peacekeepers with a larger
U.N. presence. China has built highways and factories in Khartoum,
even erecting the Friendship Conference Hall, the city's largest
public meeting place.

5- THE "GENOCIDE" LABEL MADE IT WORSE

Many of the world's governments have drawn the line at labeling Darfur
as genocide. Some call the conflict a case of ethnic cleansing, and
others have described it as a government going too far in trying to
put down a rebellion.

But in September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
referred to the conflict as a "genocide." Rather than spurring greater
international action, that label only seems to have strengthened
Sudan's rebels; they believe they don't need to negotiate with the
government and think they will have U.S. support when they commit
attacks. Peace talks have broken down seven times, partly because the
rebel groups have walked out of negotiations. And Sudan's government
has used the genocide label to market itself in the Middle East as
another victim of America's anti-Arab and anti-Islamic policies.

Perhaps most counterproductive, the United States has failed to follow
up with meaningful action. "The word 'genocide' was not an action
word; it was a responsibility word," Charles R. Snyder, the State
Department's senior representative on Sudan, told me in late 2004.
"There was an ethical and moral obligation, and saying it underscored
how seriously we took this." The Bush administration's recent idea of
sending several hundred NATO advisers to support African Union
peacekeepers falls short of what many advocates had hoped for.

"We called it a genocide and then we wine and dine the architects of
the conflict by working with them on counterterrorism and on peace in
the south," said Ted Dagne, an Africa expert for the Congressional
Research Service. "I wish I knew a way to improve the situation there.
But it's only getting worse."

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