March 7, 2009

The Darfur Conflict: Crimes Against Humanity In Sudan Pt. 3 of 3 The Conflict's Wider Impact

I have taken the following from the Crimes of War Project website. Please click the link to read the entire description. I hope this helps you understand further the humanitarian crisis that exist in Darfur. These people have ENDURED the unthinkable for two decades.

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The Darfur Conflict: Crimes Against Humanity In Sudan
April 9, 2004

The Conflict's Wider Impact

The country primarily impacted by the Darfur conflict is of course Chad . But the main impact is not of a humanitarian nature, in spite of the magnitude of the refugee problem. The main impact is political. President Idris Deby is an ethnic Biday. The Bidayat are a tribe closely related to the Zaghawa and to other Tebbu groups who live astride the Sudano-Chadian border. Several of these, the various Zaghawa clans in particular, are closely linked with the insurrection, while President Deby is closely allied to the Khartoum government which supported his armed takeover in December 1990. But President Deby is at the same time heavily dependent on his Zaghawa/Bidayat support group, particularly to keep control of the oilfields in Southern Chad.

Southern Chad , which is ethnically and religiously very different from the North, was the site of frequent rebellions during the 1970s and 1980s. The president's ethnic allies provide his main insurance against threats to the southern oilfields. But since unlike him they support the insurrection of their cousins in Darfur, there is a major contradiction between the head of state and the people who most closely support him. The result is that the power structure in Ndjamena is split, with elements fighting the Darfur rebels (the Chadian Army has intervened several times on Sudanese territory in support of Khartoum 's forces) and other elements which support the uprising. This situation has considerably weakened the Chadian regime and there are fears, particularly in Paris and in Khartoum, that president Deby might fall, a victim of these contradictions.

The second effect of the Darfur conflict on regional politics is the influence of the violence on the intra-Sudanese peace talks now being held in Naivasha (Kenya). The main question is bluntly whether it makes any sense to be negotiating peace for one section of the country while another is on fire. There has been no answer so far to this question because the SPLA which has fought Khartoum for over twenty years is as desperate to make peace as the government is eager to give the appearance of wanting to do so. The southern movement is both exhausted and hopeful that any kind of peace, even a bad one, will put it in a better tactical position in the future. The government is not in the same dire straights financially or technically, but it needs at least a semblance of peace to retain political control in the North where it has in effect been in a minority position ever since it seized power in 1989. Out of these converging needs, some kind of a (weak) common ground can be found.

The Darfur conflict has deeply upset this delicate balance between North and South. The SPLA has accepted not to mention the Darfur crisis in the course of the negotiations while the Khartoum government is trying to delay the signature of any agreement with the South long enough to crush the western insurrection. Some observers had predicted that on the contrary Khartoum would want to sign quickly in order to be able to take a good slice of its 70,000 strong military force out of the South in order to send it fighting into the West. But many of these theoretically “northern” troops are in fact from Darfur itself and their discipline could break down if they were sent back home to fight their brothers. Therefore Khartoum has delayed signing, in spite of intense US pressure to reach an agreement before the American presidential elections of November 2004 (some of President Bush strongly religious supporters are keen on an agreement to “protect the Christians” in the Sudan).

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