Genocide of Darfur

The Genocide of Darfur

        Genocide, as defined by David J. Samuels, is “coordinated plan(s) seeking to eliminate all members of a particular ethnic, religious, or national groups, through mass murder”(Samuels).  This, then, would seem like a simple thing to see when it comes to calling out what is, and what is not, a situation of genocide. Or is it? We will take a look at the genocide that took place in Sudan between the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed.

In the Darfur are of Sudan in the spring of 2003, an army calling themselves the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army began to attach government installations. It was the belief that the government of Sudan, held mostly by Arab Muslims, were discriminating against black non-Muslims in the country, taking the money from the outlying communities and only distributing the wealth of the country in areas that were Muslim. This, then, is an act of political violence. Force was used to cause harm from political reasons. But was it genocide?

        The government of Sudan was caught off guard. The rebels had won most of their battles against the government, and were pushing towards the capital. From the looks of what was happening, it would be easy to say that the SLM/A was initiating an attack on the government, and with the forces that they had, could overthrow the government, causing a revolution. Because that hadn’t happened yet, it was instead just a civil war up till that point.

        But then, the government of Sudan, seeing their weakness, began to fund regional militias. These militias, under the monetary support of the government, began to push back the rebels. During this time, only cities that were non-Muslim were attacked, regardless as to whether there were Muslim cities and non-Muslim cities in the area of control of the SLM/A (History). The attacks were against military and civilian targets, and ended up displacing around 2.7 million people from their homes (BBC). This has also led to conflicts with Chad because many people have fled across the border, sparking some skirmishes between the Janjaweed and Chad’s military forces. Eventually, a cease fire was called between the two forces under the watchful eye of other nations.

        From all of this, was the conflict really a genocide? While it has been classified as such, it wasn’t in the beginning. Originally it was an uprising. So should it be a civil war with a tragic end, then? How about the fact that the original target of the SLM/A was the government, but in the end was local militias, should that change what this event has been labeled as? While it is true that there was genocide as the effect of the Darfur Conflict, there was much more that had happened. I do agree that the end result was genocide, but I do not think that the entire event should be called the genocide of Darfur, which is what most people would think of the conflict as. It makes the reason for the conflict starting in the first place unnoticeable. People would look at it and think that it was just a genocide, not a war started from perceived grievances. So, while it was a genocide, and fits the definition of a genocide, I do not think that it should be called a genocide, mainly because that was not how the conflict started.

Works Cited

"The Darfur Conflict." History.com. The History Channel, n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.

<http://www.history.com/topics/darfur-conflict>.

"War in Darfur." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur>.

"Q&A: Sudan's Darfur Conflict." BBC News. BBC, 23 Feb. 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3496731.stm>.

Samuels, David J. Comparative Politics. N.p.: Pearson, 2010.