Darfur

It is great to be aware what is going on in the world. This book is helpful!

I purchased this book for my class on Conflict and Conflict Resolution at San Diego State. This book is very detailed giving all the background on Sudan the country, its different tribes and groups as well as all of the individuals who have held or are seeking power in Sudan. The book also highlights the regional players and their modivations such as Libya, Chad, Eriteria who are seeking to keep Sudan destablized for their own personal gain. The authors do an excellent job of also bring to light the international aspects as well as the local and national issues the helped to create the circumstances of the first civil war/ conflict of north vs south Sudan and then Darfur. Not to mention the problems that stem from the international communties poor foresight when it came to resolving the North vs. South Sudan issues and the treaty that has made it impossible to truly resolve the Darfur conflict. Also how the international community and aid agencies shot themselves in the foot by labeling Darfur a genocide - spending more time documenting the genocide than helping people get food and water in that barren land. However the one criticism I have of this book is the amount of shifting between different eras in history, players (wait till you get to the part about SLA vs SPLA vs SLA W vs SLA M) essentially you need a felt board like they use in military strategies to keep track of the players and their movements around Sudan. I however despite my critisims highly recommend this book as a primer for anyone interested in Sudan and the root issues of Darfur.

People professionally concerned with genocide prevention and Darfur recommended this short but outstanding book (there are quite a few others on the crisis) when I needed to supplement my knowledge quickly. Its 134 pages of condensed information are based on prolonged and detailed work in the region and with people who know it well. The complexity of Darfur and its crisis as well as its relationship to other regions of Sudan emerge with balance, but with a clear picture of the horrors being committed. It enlarged my knowledge greatly beyond what I had gleaned from the media and a few days spent with some refugees from Darfur. It discusses events up to early 2005, its publication year, so is not quite up to date. The experts recommended it despite pointing this out, and I'm glad they did.

This book is a valuable asset to any library. The only problem I had with this book is trying to read Swahili. I took Introduction to Swahili 101 at Oklahoma City Junior College, but I guess that just was not good enough.

There are plenty of serious human rights abuses in Africa which Westerners, particularly American corporations and arms dealers have strong complicity in: the 4 million dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia under Meles Zenawi, Equatorial Guinea under Teodor Obiang, Chad under Idriss Deby, Uganda under Museveni. One can also mention the horrors of the neoliberal economic model which African governments have followed so studiously. But Sudan and Zimbabwe seem to take up 90 percent of recent Western media reporting about abuses in the region. Both governments, vile as they certainly are, have struck independent courses via US power over the years and so are demonized in the US media. Former Senator John Danforth, US ambassador to the UN in 2004, stated on British tv in 2005 that the main reason the Bush administration made noises about Darfur in the election year of 04' was to please the voting block of fundamentalist Christians who have long believed the Sudanese regime to be satanic. There is plenty of stuff in this book about the barbaric atrocities of the Sudanese government and the Janjiweed, the paramilitary force which acts as a proxy for the Sudanese military in Darfur.. In Darfur, the driving Arab supremacist ideology was rooted in the "Arab Gathering" group which emerged under the backing of Colonel Qadaffi of Libya in the 70's and 80's. Many in Sudan's government have been influenced by this ideology. The authors provide much quotation from these brethren who stress the need to make Darfur a purely Arab homeland and to cleanse it of non-Arab elements. Qadaffi funded the Sudanese Islamist/Arab nationalist groups Ansar and Muslim Brothers against his enemy, Sudan's then dictator Jafarr Nimieri in the 70's and early 80's. Many in these groups ended up in positions of power after the Islamist regime took power in June 1989. Qadaffi also funded Arab supremacists in Chad during the 80's, many of whom found refuge in Darfur and have since made not insignificant contributions to the violence there. It also appears from the authors' discourse that the conflict is driven by the struggle for land and water in an area which has seen much drought, and a dwindling supply of water and arable land..... The authors point out that Arabs of the Bagarra Rizeigat--to which the majority of Arabs in Darfur belong--have kept out of the conflict.... A not insignificant number of the janjiweed are violent criminals released from Sudan's prisons to serve in that body...... Bagarra Rizeigat have protected refugees from Janjiweed terror. The Bagarra Rizeigat chief, Saeed Madibu has resisted efforts by the Khartoum government to bribe him and terrorize him into submission. The authors seem to imply that most of the Arab tribal elites in Darfur would greatly prefer peaceful social, political and commercial interaction between Arabs and African tribes instead of the apopaclyptic ideology of a Darfur cleansed of all black people that Janjiweed leaders