UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW

Institute of International Relations

Land scarcity and conflicts: Darfur case studyLand scarcity and conflicts: Darfur case study

VVINCENZOINCENZO C CAPOCASALEAPOCASALE

International Security and Armed Conflicts

dr Kamila Pronińska

______________________________________________________________________

Academic Year 2011-2012

This paper was submitted by the author for a course attended at the University of

Warsaw. The views and opinions expressed hereby are those of the author and not

necessarily those of or endorsed by the University of Warsaw, the Institute of

International Relations or anyone else.

Table of contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 A theoretical framework .................................................................................................... 1

Resource Capture ........................................................................................................... 3 Ecological Marginalisation ............................................................................................ 3

Darfur and Sudan ............................................................................................................... 5 The genesis of the conflict ................................................................................................. 7

Draught circumscription crisis ..................................................................................... 11 International involvement ............................................................................................ 17

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 19 References ....................................................................................................................... 20

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to provide a short report concerning the possible links

existing between environmental scarcity and conflicts. In this perspective I will try to

use the major findings in the recent literature concerning those links as a prism to focus

on and analyse the recent conflict of Darfur, which represents an emblematic case.

Though the consideration of many other factors that contributed in activate and

catalyse the conflict is important for a complete analysis of the topic, I would like to

tighten up this work to the role played by land scarcity and the land tenure system in

Darfur.

In the first section I will lay down a simple theoretical foundation, trying to

aggregate in a coherent framework the main results arising out of some relevant works

concerning the relationship between environmental scarcity and conflict. Then I will

provide general information about Sudan and Darfur. Moving up from this base, I will

then try to couple the main features of the conflict with the theoretical framework,

filling the empty moulds furnished by the conceptual findings with facts and events.

Concluding, I will just underline how, though it is not the only cause that triggered the

explosion of violence in Darfur, land scarcity and environmental scarcity in a broader

perspective constituted more than a spark for it, thus making meaningful and useful the

shift of this issue from environmental-focused researches to security-focused ones.

A theoretical framework

There is a huge literature concerning the possible existing links between

environmental scarcity and conflicts and unfortunately it is a field highly cross-

examined by different sets of hypothesis and featured by heterogeneous methodological

approaches.1 This means that every effort made in order to unify the major findings of

the literature in a coherent system leads to loose the boundaries of concepts and

categories.

One of the main contributors to the topic states that there are three main sources

causing environmental scarcity: environmental change, population growth and unequal

1 Salehyan (2008); Burke et al. (2010)

1

social distribution of resources.2 In its original version, the concept of environmental

change refers to a decline in the quantity or quality of a renewable resource that occurs

at a faster rate than the natural renewal. This change is human-inducted. According to

some scholars, the notion so defined encompasses mainly long term environmental

changes, but they are so gradual, that identifying theoretical or empirical thresholds that

trigger violence once crossed is difficult.3 In other words, the notion lacks to consider

short term changes which are usually not human-inducted. Thus concerning our

specific case, I am going to address the progressive and gradual degradation of arable

and agricultural lands due to overuse, erosion and desertification as a long term

environmental change, and the changes in annual rainfall which usually lead to

draughts, as a short term environmental change.

The effects and the impact of both the long term and the short term environmental

changes are found to be significant for the likelihood of conflict onset. Moreover,

according to some researches, short term environmental changes seem to have a greater

influence, cause they are more likely to trigger conflict, while the outcome of long term

environmental changes is not always necessarily a conflict, but given the long time span

during which those changes occur, the outcome could also be a gradual adaptation at the

new conditions.4 For both the long and the short term environmental changes, the

relation with conflicts has been interpreted within a cost-benefit perspective.

Environmental changes can cause major disruption for traditional livelihood, altering

economic returns from conventional economic activity, lowering incomes and

eventually leading to make conflict appear more profitable or more likely to rise

incomes in the future.5

The second component of environmental scarcity, population growth causes the

reduction of resources’ per-capita availability. In the case of Darfur this component

should be take into account not only in terms of high-birthrate-inducted population

growth, but also in terms of migration-inducted population growth.

2 Homer-Dixon (1994)3 Hendrix & Glaser (2007)4 Hendrix & Glaser (2007)5 Collier & Hoeffler (2002)

2

The third component, unequal social distribution of resources, refers to the degree of

concentration of the available resources in the hands of few people, which makes them

much better off than the rest of people, subjected to scarcity.

The three components are likely to interact with each other, amplifying the final

result. Two main patterns of interaction can take place: resource capture and ecological

marginalisation.

Resource Capture

Environmental changes and population growth can combine causing a major fall in

the quantity and quality of available resources. Given this situation, powerful groups in

the society are highly encouraged to shift the resource distribution in their favour (see

fig. 1).6

Ecological Marginalisation

Unequal social distribution of resources can combine with population growth

causing environmental changes in regions ecologically fragile, thus high population

density and lack of knowledge and capital to promote a responsible consumption of

natural resources increase environmental scarcity (see fig. 2).7

6 Homer-Dixon (1994)7 ibid.

3

environmental changes population growth

unequal distribution

increased enviromental scarcity

fig. 1 Resource Capture

Considering our case study, the link with these two patterns of interaction is evident.

The Sahel region is considered by many reports one of the most vulnerable regions in

the world to environmental changes.8 Moreover, as it will be mentioned later, Sudan is

an authoritarian regime ruled by a restrict Arab elite that is likely to shift resources in

order to maintain its power.

In order to adapt to environmental scarcity societies can adopt different sets of

strategies that require an high level of what has been defined as social and technical

ingenuity. Briefly, technical ingenuity is needed, for example, to develop new

agricultural technologies to compensate environmental loss, while social ingenuity is

needed to create institutions and organisations that protect people from the effect of

environmental scarcity and furnish technological entrepreneurs with strong incentives to

achieve technological improvements.9

Before moving to the next section it’s important to underline that two interaction

were found to be really strong by the main literature: one is that between environmental

scarcity and great population movement which in turn causes group identity conflicts;

8 ACCES. Climate Change and Security in Africa. Vulnerability Discussion Paper.;CESPI. Cambiamenti climatici e governance della sicurezza: la rilevanza politica della nuova

agenda internazionale. May 2010 http://www.parlamento.it/documenti/repository/affariinternazionali/osservatorio/approfondimenti/Approfondimento_16_CESPI_Clima.pdf;

Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General, Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 of 18 September 2004, Geneva 25 January 2005 http://www.un.org/news/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf9 Homer-Dixon (1994)

population growth unequal distribution

environmental changes

increased enviromental scarcity

fig. 2 Ecological Marginalisation

4

the other one is that environmental scarcity, not only increases economic deprivation,

but more deeply it disrupts key social institutions, which in turn causes civil strives and

insurgencies. In a general perspective the most important social institution affected by

environmental scarcity is, obviously, the state, mainly because fast-moving,

unpredictable and complex environmental problems and scarcity increase financial and

political demands while they simultaneously reduce their capacity to meet those

demands. The state subjected to this pressures is either likely to disaggregate or as an

alternative, it might keep scarcity-induced civil strives from causing its progressive

enfeeblement and fragmentation by becoming a “hard” regime, that is authoritarian,

intolerant to opposition, and militarized. This second option is possible only if, despite

the scarcity, the state has still sufficient remaining capacity to mobilize or seize

resources for its own purposes and to pursue the authoritarian course.10

Darfur and Sudan

The Republic of Sudan (RoS) is the third largest African country. It is bordered

by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the

east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to

the west, and Libya to the northwest. Before the split in two different states with South

Sudan moving aside, Sudan was the largest African Country with a size roughly

equivalent to Western Europe and its boundaries stretched 7, 789 km and bordered three

more states: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya and Uganda.11

This location makes Sudan geostrategically important because it can be regarded as

a backdoor to the Middle East. Thus along with Egypt and Libya (until Geddafi’s fall),

thanks to its size, location, and natural resources, especially oil, Sudan rose as an

important actor in African politics and in the series of internal conflicts and shifting

alliances involving the whole region, acquiring the potential to be a dominant power in

Africa.12

10 ibid.11 “Sudan Country Profile”, OCHA, http://ochaonline.un.org/sudan/Resources/countryProfile/tabid/3012/Default.aspx12 Reyna (2010); Apsel (2009)

5

Darfur is a region in the westernmost part of Sudan with a population of

approximately 7 million. It has an average area of more than 400,000 km2,

topographically diversified with a huge variation of the landscape (lowlands, highlands

and volcanic mountains) but mostly it is plateau about 650 to 1000 metres above sea-

level.13 Considering mainly annual rainfall, four geographic areas can be distinguished.

Three of these can be placed from north to south, banding from desert in the north to

savannah in the south. The fourth is a bit south of the centre of Darfur. This is the Jebel

Marra extinct volcanic mountain range. The area all around the main crater in the

southwest corner is among the most verdant vegetation in Sudan. Rainfall is heavy so it

is an area of fertile soil, intensive farming, and higher population density.

At a first glance it’s possible to distinguish roughly three predominant sorts of

livelihoods in this geography. In the north, in the Sahel and Sahara, are found peoples

who are mostly camel pastoralists, who additionally raise some sheeps and goats, and

13 Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General, Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 of 18 September 2004, Geneva 25 January 2005

6

increasingly practise some sort of horticulture. In the savannah and Jebel Marra are

peoples who are permanent farmers, for the most part cultivating sorghum and millet.

Towards the southern part of the savannah are a large number of cattle pastoralists.14

The main non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur are the Fur, around the Jebel Marra, the

Zaghawa nomads who occupy the north-western parts of the North Darfur State, the

Tunjur in the areas around Fasher, the Meidob also in the North Darfur State, the

Masalit who are the largest ethnic group in the West Darfur State, the Berti around the

Kebkabiya and Mallet areas of North Darfur State, the Tama, the Mararit, the Mima, the

Daju, the Birgid and the Fallata of the South Darfur State.

The Arab groups include the Rezeigat, Habbaniya, Bani-Halba, Taisha, and Maaliya,

Salamaat plus some smaller groups, all of whom are cattle nomads living in southern

Darfur lumped together as Baggara. In northern Darfur live the Bani Hussein cattle

nomads in addition to the Zaiyadiya and northern Rezeigat (grouping Mahameed,

Mahriya, Eraigat, Etaifat, and Awlad- Rashid) who are camel nomads.15

The genesis of the conflict

In order to understand what is actually happening in Darfur, it’s necessary to take a

look back into the historical background of the region, collecting evidences to support

the idea that a constant and progressive marginalisation, some significant environmental

changes and a migration-inducted population growth brought to the current situation.

Darfur had been a traditional Sudanese Kingdom (Sultanate of Darfur) with multi-

ethnic composition where the Keira constitute the core group. It originated in the mid-

17th century, with many people converging around Jebel Marra.16 Established more than

a century earlier was the Funj Kingdom that occupied the Nile valley area. The Wadai

sultanate occupied the area East of the Lake Chad.17 The three sultanates were sort of

sister kingdoms, espoused to Islamic ideology, led by Muslim Sultans and ruling

families claiming Arab ancestry. Such claims explain the interrelationships and the

cross-cultural influences upon and among the several ethnic groups of Darfur.

14 Reyna (2010)15 Badri (2008)16 Badmus (2011)17 Badri (2008)

7

It’s important to underline that the claim of Arab ancestry of the ruling families

appears to be more a cultural based claim than an ethnical based one, going by their

physical appearances since they bear more similarities with dark-skinned Sudanese

people rather than with the people of the Arabian Peninsula.18

Fur Sultanate political system can be described as consociational with the Sultan

ruling from the top of the power pyramid and the leaders of the constituent ethnic

groups executing orders. Since the Sultanate was dichotomised along the cleavages of

ethnicity, tribe, language, etc, religion served as a web that unified it and the Sultan was

recognised as a Divine ruler. The Sultan was duty bound to act as arbiter in any dispute

between ethnic groups or tribes and also allocated land rights to different and numerous

territorialised ethnic groups. The allocation of lands was mainly regulated by two forms

of land ownership: a communal ownership and the Hakura system.

The hakura (plural “hawakir”) was the entitlement granted by the Sultan to tribe

leaders, chiefly families or religious leaders for some usufructuray rights over the

people occupying the land defined by the hakura. Two types of hawakir were granted by

the sultans of the Keira: administrative hakura which entitled the owner with limited

rights of taxation over the people occupying part or all of the land included in the

specific area. This first type was usually granted to tribal leaders. Effectively,

administrative hakura was a sort of communal ownership of land for a given group of

people who usually made up a tribe or a division of it under a recognized leader.

Hakura of privilege gave the title holder all rights for taxes and religious dues. The

hakura of privilege (which was relatively smaller), was normally issued to reward

individuals for services and did not carry serious administrative implications.19

This system resulted in the creation of Dar (homeland) that were strongly associated

to the main tribe originally occupying that area. The rights of the title holder, usually

called Nazir, were granted by a hierarchical-ordered administration, later integrated as

the lower echelon of provincial government and called Native Administration system

during the colonial period.20

Most of the groups’ leaders were entitled of hakura, so that their tribes resulted to

have a traditional Dar (homeland) that bore their names and determined their production

18 Badmus (2011); Badri (2008)19 Badri (2008); Unruh (2012)20 Unruh (2012)

8

systems. The lack of Dars among some groups was partially because the initial granting

of land during the Sultanate favoured sedentary tribes, but also because in the past

permanent land rights didn’t represent an important issue for Arab nomads tribes, whose

livelihood depended on transient rights. Though the hakura system was not applied to

all the land in Darfur, the lands under the communal tenure system started to be

regarded as homelands by the tribes that used to live there (sedentary or seasonally in

the case of nomad tribes).21

Anyway the presence of homeland as a separate territorial entity did not prevent

interactions among all of these groups and the search for pasture and water sources

induced considerable movements that encourage intra-tribal contacts that always

resulted into conflictual relations as competition over these resources became intense.

Usually these conflicts were settled by guaranteeing some transients rights to the

nomad tribe, operationalised through corridors passing through the lands of the

sedentary tribe and negotiated by the leaders of the tribes involved.

Though it didn’t cause any significant change in the land tenure system described

above, the incorporation of Darfur sultanate and of the other two sultanates occupying

surrounding areas into the Turkish-Egyptian rule in 1873 was the first step towards

region’s marginalisation.22 The movement of power seat to Khartoum from Darfur

meant the strengthening of the position of central riverine Sudan at the expense of the

peripheries. Moreover, some northern Sudanese ethnic groups were favoured by the

authorities in gaining entry into the state’s institutions at the perils of other ethnic

formations.

After the Mahdist revolution in 1885 and the period of the so called Madhist state,

which brought to a further marginalisation of the peripheries, Sudan was re-conquered

by the Condominium rule of Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1898 and Darfur was

incorporated into the emerging Sudanese state in 1917. The country was polarised into

centre-periphery dichotomy of Arabs and Africans, the existing segmental cleavages

were deepened and reinforced by the lopsided colonial policy of divide and rule, which

favoured the centre and policies that encouraged separate development were promoted.23

21 Badri (2008)22 Badmus (2011)23 ibid.

9

Moreover some changes were adopted in the land tenure system with the Land

Settlement and Registration Act of 1925 which stated that it was possible to acquire

property rights through registration, mainly on the basis of occupation in good faith.

Hakura system in western Sudan was recognized in the law but was never fully

incorporated into it. At the beginning this Act didn’t represent a real problem for

Darfurians. The colonial administration also institutionalised the bias in the settlement

of disputes between tribes and favoured the settled tribes because their activities were

regarded as more profitable, making sharper the distinction between landholding and

non-landholding groups.24

During the colonial period a semi-skilled Sudanese of northern extraction elite had

emerged and dominated Sudan’s politics after the independence in 1956.

By the time the RoS gained its independence, the polarisation of the society along

cleavages deepened and gave rise to hierarchical classification patterned along

tribal/ethnic lines which gave more worth to certain ethnic group over others, using

various anthropological arguments that are based on racial prejudices to portray the

virtues of the Arabs of the Nile valley vis-à-vis the vices of others.

These prejudices denied Sudan the opportunity of building a united plural society

and propelled the lopsided development between Khartoum and the peripheral areas

using the Sudan’s Ministry of Finance as a tool of economic repression of the

peripheries.25

While the Gezira triangle in the North became the bastion of development, the West,

East, and South became increasingly underdeveloped and depending heavily on

Khartoum for development projects. This is especially true for Darfur because of its

greater ‘relative’ underdevelopment compared with other regions. Some studies

compared the annual family income in six Sudanese regions during different period

(Khartoum, Northern, Central, Eastern, Kordofan, and Darfur) finding that Darfur

region income was the lowest.

The rivalry between Khartoum and the Darfur region induced the emergence of

regional identity movements that became instruments in the struggles against what was

considered as an “internal colonisation” from the riverine Arabs.26

24 Badri (2008); Unruh (2012)25 Badmus (2011)26 ibid.

10

The first response to marginalisation came in the form of the emergence of an

underground group named, the ‘Red Flame’. In spite of its efforts in raising the tempo

of resistance, the Red Flame did not last long. Its demise saw the emergence, in 1963, of

another more powerful covert group named, Soony. This organisation, unlike its

predecessor, became more aggressive in achieving its objectives. It also succeeded by

being the rallying point for both Darfurians in the Armed Forces and civilians. But

Khartoum managed to dissolve the organisation and ordered a mass purge of Darfurians

in the National Army and multiple obstacles were created with the intent of reducing the

chances for Darfurians to entering into the military and police academies. These

humiliations led to the creation of the Darfur Development Front (DDF) in 1964 as, not

only an overt, but also a well organised organisation to champion the cause of the

marginalised region in question.

Distributive injustice and marginalisation of Darfur appear forward taking a look at

Sudanese government spending/expenditures during two flourishing period for

Sudanese economy which unveil the roles of Khartoum in entrenching regions’ relative

development disparity. The first period encompasses a ten years timeframe (1971-

1980) during the Arab-Israeli war, when oil-producing countries in the Middle East

became super rich and Arab petrol-dollars flew into the Sudan’s treasury. The second

one refers to the years between 1998 and 2001 when Sudan started to produce oil by

itself. The two periods, altogether, were era of economic buoyancy that saw the

Government of Sudan (GoS) in active development projects and spending spree, but

Darfur, unfortunately, was not significantly involved in any projects and did not receive

substantial expenditures.27

Draught circumscription crisis

Moreover, during the first period, Darfur experienced what has been defined as a

draught circumscription crisis which occurs when draughts affect some areas of a region

more than others. The more-affected area shifts from subsistence-possible status to

increasingly subsistence-threatened status, while the less-affected area remains

subsistence-possible status. Such a situation results in a mode of production crisis for

27 ibid.

11

the people in the more-affected area, motivating them to migrate to the less-affected

areas.28

Such a crisis occurred in Darfur between 1972 and 1985, a severe period of scarce

rainfall when there were two major draughts: a severe one in 1973–75; and a very

severe one in 1982–84. Pastures were ruined, water points dried up and fields received

insufficient rainfall to produce crops. However, the droughts affected Darfur

differentially, with the more northern areas hit far more than the Jebel Marra and

southern savannah regions. This meant that the northern areas of Darfur, where Abbala

Arabs and Zaghawa lived, became increasingly subsistence-impossible, while the

southerly areas remained subsistence-possible.

At the end of the period, it has been argued that the droughts had completely forced

more than 10 million people to abandon their homelands in the desperate search for

land, food and water. During this period, livestock perished in their thousands. The

shrinking natural resource base provoked by the crisis wreaked havoc in the domestic

mode of production, inducing massive southward migration of the pastoral Arabs and

livestock into the central and southern Darfur occupied by such ethnic groups as Fur,

Birgid, Daju.

Before the draught circumscription crisis it was possible for strangers to be allocated

some usufruct rights on the agreement that they will remit one-tenth of the produce at

harvest. Thus many non-members had been allocated land on usufructuary terms, and

were later incorporated in to the local system.29 But the mass influx of the herders in the

second half of the 1980s became problematic due to the non availability of arable land

to accommodate them and became a source of threats to the well established hakura

system. Thus, tensions were completely mounted while animal thefts, cattle rustling,

and inter-ethnic showdowns became frequent. Additionally, African farming ethnic

groups (the Fur and Birgid in particular) started to expand their cultivated plots to

obtain food amounts to satisfy their increasing demands induced by population growth.

Expansion in cultivation had been achieved through the use of lands which were part of

the natural forests in the region and the corridors which were assigned for the migration

and trade roots.30 Consequently African farming tribes became very uncomfortable and

28 Reyna (2010)29 Badmus (2011); Unruh (2012)30 Badri (2008)

12

hostile to camel-riding Arab nomads from north Darfur who increasingly trampled their

farmland as they roamed in search of pasture. This contrasted sharply with the age-old

practice where under normal circumstance, the sedentary tribes traditionally welcomed

their guests with open hands and shared their resources with them. The massive

migration of Arabs into the Fur areas was of a completely different character.

So it’s possible to find many of the elements mentioned above in the theoretical

framework. The two severe draughts represent a short term environmental change

which led to land degradation. The massive southward migration of northern darfurians

combined with an high birthrate in the region led to a significant population growth and

to a reduction in resources’ per-capita availability. The land tenure system based on the

hakura, favouring the land-holding tribes, made the competition for resources harsher

and started to be perceived as unfair by many darless (Arab) nomad tribes.

This perception was reinforced by four acts adopted by the central government in

Karthoum, controlled by the Sudanese Socialist Union (SSU) that took the power in

1969 thanks to a military coup led by Gafar El-Nimeiri.

First in 1970 the Unregistered Land Act (ULA) stipulated that all lands not

registered before via the Land Settlement and Registration Act of 1925 became

government land. Applied to Darfur this meant that virtually all the lands were to

become government land because the Land Settlement and Registration Act didn’t

address the customary tenure system of hakura and anyway there was no real

opportunity to register land according to the 1925 Act, due to the lack of services for

surveying and institutions for registration.31 Then in 1971 the Native Administration

was abolished jeopardizing the conflict-settling capacity of the hakura system.32 In 1980

the Regional Autonomy Act, agreed during the 1972 Addis Ababa Accord that ended

the first Sudanese civil war where regional autonomy was granted Southern Sudan, was

extended to cover the whole country, but the Governor of Darfur was appointed by the

central government of Khartoum. Though the severe reaction of Darfurians brought

Khartoum to step back appointing as Governor a Darfurian of Fur ethnic background,

the episode underlined the central government’s will to take a side in the dispute.33

Finally the Civil Transactions Act adopted in 1984 stated that “all lands belongs to

31 Unruh (2012)32 ibid.33 Badmus (2011)

13

Allah”; it follows that all lands started to be considered open to any Muslim.34 The

combination of all these acts brought more and more darless nomad tribes (mostly

Arab) to claim lands owned by sedentary tribes through the hakura and subjected the

customary user of unregistered land to Karthoum’s will.

But more than the erosion of key social institutions (as the hakura) the most

consistent consequence for our case study is the increase in the number of conflicts

between tribes. It has been registered that between 1932 and 2000 there were 42

conflict, but 39 of them took place between 1974 and 2000 and 25 of them between

1983 and 2000. The temporal succession of these data unveils unambiguously a straight

relation between the draughts, the marginalisation and the population growth

experienced by Darfur in that period on the one hand and the increase of conflicts in the

same period on the other hand.35

After a period when the clashes were substantially limited to some episodes of

violence between some tribes, the conflict leapt on a different level both on a structural

scale dimension and on a violence magnitude dimension. By ‘structural scale’ is meant

the number of structural and institutional domains involved in the conflict at any one

time, with the scale increasing from only local, to local and regional, to local, regional

and national, to all the preceding plus international spaces. By ‘violence magnitude’ is

meant the numbers killed within an area over some time period, with the magnitude

increasing from handfuls killed in village or camp localities each year to thousands

upon thousands killed throughout the entire state of Darfur each year. It has been proved

that the relationship between structural scale and violence magnitude is positive

because, as structural scale becomes more complex, bringing more structural domains

into the conflict with greater capacity for violence, so the magnitude of the violence

increases.36

During the 80s all the tribes involved in local conflicts started to aggregate along the

cleavage between sedentary and nomad groups, which corresponds to the cleavage

between landholding and non-landholding groups, which roughly corresponds to the

cleavage between Arab and African groups as well.

34 Unruh (2012)35 Reyna (2010)36 ibid.

14

The Arabs set up a military organisation including 27 tribes and this militia began to

be spoken of as Janjawid.37 Similarly the Fur and other African sedentary tribes

organised their own militia that came to be known as Malishiat. The regional

government was not able to settle the conflict ongoing because of the erosion of the

traditional conflict-settling mechanism. Moreover the parties involved in the dispute

came to view the regional government as a participant in disputes and, indeed, the

regional government was controlled by the Fur throughout much of the 1980s.

Another turning point in the aggravation of Darfur crisis is the coup that in 1989

placed al-Bashir and his NIF Islamists at the central government in Khartoum after four

years of democracy. Within a decade Khartoum turned the Darfur regional conflict into

a national insurgency. This is because al-Bashir wanted to solve the regional crisis of

Darfur by taking sides; and the side he took was that of Arabs. Khartoum supported the

Arabs because the Masalit, Zaghawa, and especially the Fur, who had dominated

regional governmental offices from independence through the 1980s, had their own

ideas as to how Darfur should be governed and they were at odds with those of al-

Bashir.38 It’s in this perspective that in 1994 the central government subdivided Darfur

into the three, North, West and South states, gerrymandering boundaries to make a Fur

and Masalit minorities in each of the states. Like all other states in the Sudan, each of

the three states in Darfur is governed by a Governor (Wali), appointed by the central

Government in Khartoum, and supported by a local administration. All the posts in the

Native Administration (which was re-established in 1987 during the short democratic

period) were distributed mostly to Arabs, who assumed territorially based jurisdictions

even in non-Arab areas.

These events meant for the land owners in Darfur that there was now an additional

enemy, the central government, and so they developed military organisations able to

engage conflict at national level.

The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), previously named Darfur Liberation Front

(DLF), came out with its declaration on 14 March 2003. The SLA, which began in 2001

was explicitly a trans-tribal organisation that united Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa elites in

37 a traditional Darfurian term denoting an armed bandit or outlaw on a horse or camel. For further information see the Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General, Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 of 18 September 2004, Geneva, 25 January 2005 http://www.un.org/news/dh/sudan/com_inq_darfur.pdf38 Apsel (2008); Reyna (2010)

15

a common arm. It grew from a few hundred to what it claimed to be a force of 11 000

soldiers organised in 13 brigades in 2005.

The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) was older than the SLA and accepted the

Islamist ideology of the Khartoum government. It was responsible for The Black Book,

secretly distributed in 2000 and 2002, which made the case that Khartoum governments

had terribly neglected Darfur, and which ended by announcing, ‘The current regime

took over . . . to augment the project of Sudan as a model of an Islamic state. Muslim

countries everywhere are looking at our experience. Its failure is a failure of Islam as

much as a failure of Sudan as a nation. It is time to set things straight.’39

The SLA and JEM were the means ‘to set things straight’, and they had nothing in

common with the regional militias of the 1980s. Rather, they were insurgent groups

fighting in Darfur, but fighting for national political goals.

Some argued that the 2003 rebellion grew out of frustration in Darfur at exclusion

from state structures of power and wealth and actually the spark of the crisis is to be

found in the signing of the Naivasha Peace Protocols on 26 May 2004 between the GoS

and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLM/A) fighting for South Sudan

autonomy. The agreement recognised the protagonists (GoS and the SPLM/A), while

other actors and regions were regarded as irrelevant, their interests and grievances not

addressed, and other conflicts, either in the North or South were completely overlooked.

Thus, Darfurians became apprehensive of the unfolding developments and weaknesses

of the Naivasha’s and took up arms against Khartoum to halt the age-old

marginalisation.40

In march 2003 SLM mounted series of armed attacks on government positions in

Darfur and vowed to continue fighting until Khartoum acceded to its demands. The

SLM believed that their actions would definitely attract world’s attention and correct

the ‘erroneous’ impression that the peace deal with the SPLM/A was sufficient to solve

Sudan’s multiple ethnic, socio-economic and military-political crises. Soon after, JEM

joined the fight against Khartoum.

39 Reyna (2010); Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General, Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1564 of 18 September 2004, Geneva 25 January 200540 Badmus (2011)

16

The two rebel groups successfully attacked the central government’s airbase at El

Fasher destroying half a dozen military aircraft and then brought attacks on Kutum,

Mellit and Tina.41

Althoug Khartoum had earlier dismissed the Darfurian insurgents as mere bandits,

Al-Bashir’s military lost 32 out of the first 34 battles, making the insurgence a source of

embarrassment. Facing the reality of the deteriorating security situations, impending

anarchy, threatening its own hegemony and ‘exhausted’ from 20 years of warfare in the

south, Khartoum responded with a ferocious counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy.42 This

strategy was dependent upon the development of a particular type of military

organisation that combines the Sudanese air force, elements of the Sudanese

intelligence services, and the Janjawid, therefore using relatively few soldiers of the

regular army. Khartoum started to support the Arab militia overtly with arms and

virtually unlimited freedom to do what they want, like fighting with scorched-earth

tactics. The Sudanese air force bombed and strafed villages. Then the Janjawid were

unleashed and entered to butcher, loot and rape local peasants and civilian population to

finish the job. The intelligence services served as organisational support.43

This warring raged over much of Darfur throughout the remainder of 2003 and

2004; thereafter it diminished but the insurgency led by JEM and SLA and the counter-

insurgency had the catalytic effect on violence, with the killing on the order of 50 000

each year.44

International involvement

Before moving to the some ending observations it’s important to focus briefly our

attention on some international and regional dynamics and in particular on the role

played by some international actors in aggravating the conflict.

It is not difficult to accept the fact that Darfur was highly unstable by the

independence of RoS and especially throughout the 1980s, but the instability of the

41 Apsel (2009); Reyna (2010); Badmus (2011)42 This sort of military strategy has already been adopted before by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq employing indigenous soldiers, air power and liaison officers, the latter to co-ordinate aerial and ground operations.43 Reyna (2010); Badmus (2011)44 Reyna (2010)

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region was also compounded by its geographical misfortune since it shares borders with

Chad and Libya.45

Chad influence on Darfur crisis is mainly related with Chadian civil war which

started in 1966 and is still ongoing. Civil war combined with some draughts generated a

large-scale migration of Chadian towards south Darfur during the last half of the 1970s

and towards north Darfur during the 1980s, aggravating the draught circumscription

crisis described above. Most of the people migrating were Arabs.

In addition, it’s not unworthy at all to underline that this migration didn’t involve

just civilian, but also rebels fighting the civil war. That was the case for the Conseil

Démocratique Revolutionaire (CDR), a component of National Liberation Front for

Chad (Frolinat). The group was extensively trained by Libyans in the desert and after it

was defeated in Chad, it moved in Darfur and formed an alliance with some Darfurian

Arab tribes, furnishing them with weapons and training.46

Moreover, during the 1980s, the Libyan strong man, Colonel Gaddafi intended to

shift the so called ‘Arab belt’ downward into Sahelian Africa and between 1987 and

1989, Libyan money, arms and ammunitions found their destinations among the

Chadian armed rebels that opposed N’Djamena. In this context, Darfur became the

stage post of the Chadian rebels and the various dissatisfied sahelian Arabs and

Touaregs hired to fight proxy war in Chad. Thus, in Darfur experienced a major arms’

proliferation with negative consequences on the security situations as it intensified

Arab/Fur festering conflicts.47 The insecurity of the region continued unabated in the

1990s with Chad, Libya, and other interests competing for supremacy and hegemony in

the region with the assistance of various ethnic groups.

Some scholars have also underlined the blurred role played by the US, because it

was argued that supporting the SPLA in South Sudan, US also supported the darfurian

rebels indirectly. Some argued that the US intervention and training of the insurgents

had occurred probably even before the assaults on Khartoum government’s position in

2003-2004, which can explain the great success the insurgents actually achieved.

45 Badmus(2011)46 Reyna (2010)47 Apsel (2009); Reyna (2010); Badmus (2011)

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Conclusion

The main question addressed by this paper can be summarised as it follows: can

environmental scarcity in general, and land scarcity in particular trigger conflict in

general and civil war in particular?

Considering our case study there’s no doubt that the relation between environmental

scarcity and its components on the one hand and the conflict on the other is straight.

Some argued that the hunt for land started in the mid 1970s in Darfur was also an issue

of political participation, because landownership and political participation are

inseparable in Darfur. There’s no doubt that in an authoritarian country, that is exactly

what RoS has been for most of the time since the independence, the need for a more

inclusive political system is likely to lead to severe political struggle and eventually to

major conflict, but what was at stake during the 1980s for most of the tribes in Darfur

was the survival of a traditional domestic mode of production, of a cultural and ethnic

identity and so of the tribe itself.

But what if we go further asking the question: can environmental scarcity draw out a

conflict for a long time causing major causalities and civilian victims?

I would say that in this case the relation is less obvious. Concerning our case study it’s

evident that what had started like a local crisis gradually turned into a regional conflict

and then into a national insurgency involving also international actors. Trying to explain

how this happened and pointing out only environmental scarcity is naïve.

The dynamic that led to the escalation of the conflict has been described in detail by

some authors and what emerges is that political institutions have a huge role or at least a

huge responsibility in every kind of conflict. If this last observation could sound prosaic

and not new what makes it more interesting is the relation with environmental scarcity.

Environmental scarcity can be sometimes, in part, subjective; which means that it is not

determined just by physical limits, but also by preferences, beliefs and norms.

This bring us to observe how the physical scarcity of environmental resources in Darfur

was aggravated by political institutions and norms, with the former not being able to

integrate in a coherent system the bulk of the latter.

The exclusive character of the hakura system, the extensive and misleading

interpretation of Islamic law, the short-sighted colonial statutory law and the post-

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colonial marginalisation policy of Khartoum combined all together, providing a (or

better to say not providing any) framework of norms, preferences and beliefs and

settling the environmental crisis.

To avoid oversimplification it’s necessary to underline what follows: the current

conflict is actually three separate conflicts. There is the conflict between the center and

the region, an intergroup conflict, and a conflict for leadership within Darfur. All those

matters are further complicated by the involvement of international actors (mainly

Chad) and it’s impossible and moreover not rewarding to isolate the crisis, trying to

analyse it out of the regional and international context. This observation is especially

true for African countries, whose boundaries don’t correspond to ethnical, tribal,

cultural and religious differences, and for civil wars that are always likely to cross

boundaries. Environmental scarcity and especially short term environmental changes

can trigger conflicts, but they are less likely to draw them out for a long time, which

means that other actors and causes, influencing the institutional context, norms and

beliefs should come into the game for that.

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