Darfur—Ground Zero for Africa's Crises of Identity

Ongoing diplomatic and peacekeeping initiatives by the international community in Darfur over the past decade have failed to stem the violence and resolve social conflict.Footnote 1 Based primarily on political analysis, such initiatives do not address the underlying causes of the civil war at the individual, family, and tribal levels. This paper examines the psychological and sociological motivations for the violence within and between the Arab and African tribes of Darfur to include motivation exploration of ethnic defections, failing cultural identity markers, and the effects of cognitive dissonance of the personal and social identities of the Darfur tribes. Keywords: Ethnic and cultural identity conflictpsychohistoriographycontested meanings of IslamDarfurtribal violenceAfrican Unionpsychogeographyindigenous justice systems Notes 1. Darfur's popular antagonists are the Rizeigat Arab tribes, part of the abbala (camel herding) tribal federation of Arabs, while the protagonists are the African Tribes of Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit. Kordofan's popular antagonists are the Arab Misseriya and Hawazma tribes, while the protagonists are the African tribes, primarily the Nuba tribe of South Sudan. The Kordofan dispute serves as a spoiler issue for the division of the North–South border and the important petroleum reserves divided by the separation of South Sudan from Sudan proper. 2. Our team had a white South African Christian who spoke English, a black Masalit from Chad who spoke French and Arabic, a light skinned Christian black from Mozambique who spoke Portuguese, a Nigerian Muslim, a Kenyan Christian-Animist, a Muslim Arab Egyptian, a black Namibian who spoke English, a Muslim rebel Zaghawa, a Muslim rebel Fur, and a Muslim government liaison, all of whom spoke Arabic. 3. Emily Wax, “A Peace Force With No Power: African Union Monitors in Sudan Face Frustrating Limits,” The Washington Post, December 11, 2004, p. A01. 4. The government of Sudan is, of course, a party to the conflict, and the government of Chad under Habre and Déby both contributed to the instability in Darfur because of their long running conflict with Libya. Mohmar Gaddafi's Arab Legion used Darfur as an Arab staging ground for his attacks on Chad in the 1980s as he attempted to build a Northern African Arab Federation. The UN, AU, EU and U.S. are the most visible participants in the struggle to end the violence in Darfur and receive much criticism in the press and from parties to the conflict for either not doing enough or doing the wrong things. Conspicuously absent is the Arab League, which has tended to avoid the conflict when possible. China has long-term contracts with the Government of Sudan to operate the oil fields located in the tri-border region of South Sudan, Kordofan, and Darfur. With oil reserves rivaling those of Saudi Arabia, the Chinese government maintains nearly 5,000 military troops in Sudan as protection for their investments. 5. The Arab Africa I refer to includes the psychogeographical landscape of those peoples on the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa who harbor an Arab identity. 6. Paul Riesman, “The Person and the Life Cycle in African Social Life and Thought,” African Studies Review 29, no. 2 (1986): 71–138. 7. Gérard Prunier, Darfur, The Ambiguous Genocide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 8. 8. Major African Identity tribes in Darfur are Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalite, while the dominant Arab tribe is the Rizeigat. All of the tribes are black, with some noticeable variations in shade between the major groups. 9. Daniel Martin Varisco, “Metaphors and Sacred History: The Geneology of Muhammed and the Arab ‘Tribe,’” Anthropological Quarterly 68, no. 3 (1995): 139–156, 139. 10. U.S. Department of State, “Bureau of African Affairs, Regional Country Desk Sudan, Background Notes,” June 29, 2010, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5424.htm (accessed October 21, 2010). 11. Darfur's African Rebel Movements circa 2009–2010: Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) led by Khalil Ibrahim; Democratic Justice and Equality Movement (DJEM); Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) led by Mahgoub Hussein; United Revolutionary Forces Front (URFF), United Resistance Front (URF) led by Abu Garda and made up of Popular Front, Sudan Revolutionary Movement, and the Popular Forces Front; Democratic Revolutionary Forces Front (DRFF); National Movement for Reform and Development (NMRD) led by Khalil Abdallah; Democratic Sudan Liberation Movement led by Ali Karbino; Sudan Liberation Movement/Army SLM/A led by Minni Minawi; Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Babiker Abdalla; SLM/A-Unity led by Abdalla Yahiya; SLM/A-Juba of Mohamed Saleh Harba ; SML/A-Juba of Ahmed Abdel Shafi; SLM/A General Line; and SLM/A Khamis Abdalla Abakar. 12. Note on the use of the word Arabized. Sudanese have been allowed wide latitude with regard to ethnic defection (see Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War [Cambridge: University Press, 2006]) or self-selected changes in the cognitive representations of the self that make up the social identity of either African or Arab. 13. Amir H. Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 14. Julie Flint and Alex De Waal, Darfur, A Short History of a Long War (London: Zed Books, 2005). 15. Charles Lindholm, Culture and Identity (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), 217. 16. Tenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dondrub, on July 6, 1935. He is the 14th and current Dalai Lama of Tibet; see Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, The Wisdom of Forgiveness (New York: Riverhead, 2004). 17. The Arab identity is represented by the National Congress Party led by President Omar Bashir and his Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, while the Islamic identity is represented by the People's Congress Party led by Hassan al-Turabi. 18. B.G.V. Nyombe, “The Politics of Language, Culture, Religion and Race in the Sudan,” Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter 6 (1994): 9–20. 19. Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (New York: Harper Collins, 2006). 20. Ibid. 21. Mohammad A. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 22. Muruwah: code of honor and conduct within tribal life that served to physically protect the tribe from within and without; for Bedouins, Muruwah is both an adjective and a noun that describes who they are and what they gift to future generations. Combined with asibiyyah, tribal solidarity, the concepts of Muruwah produced what Bedouins called karim, generous hero, who receive, hold and transmit the tribe's hasab, or ancestral honor, the method of ensuring existential transgenerational memory for the large group identity. Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur'an (Montreal: Islamic Trust Fund, 2002). 23. Henri Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 2. 24. Being white and male are primary and secondary markers of individual identity and membership in Christianity and the American body politic that serve to narrow the holders’ core identity group as well as provide a significant number of outgroups that serve to thicken the identity boundaries and provide suitable reservoirs for trait dissociation or externalization. A primary source is Vamik Volkan, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences in the Psychological Gap Between Opposing Nations,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry 6 (1986): 175–191, 185. 25. Vamik Volkan, “Large Group Identity and Chosen Trauma,” Psychoanalysis Downunder 6 (December 2005): 1–32. 26. George Jellinek, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (Vienna: University of Vienna, 1895); William McDougall, The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principals of Collective Psychology with Some Attempt to Apply them to the Interpretation of National Life and Character (Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 1921). 27. McDougall, The Group Mind, 14. 28. South Sudan is dominated by the Dinka and Nuer tribes that practice various forms of Christianity infused with indigenous beliefs held over from the original British missionaries. Seventy percent of Sudanese nationally are Muslim; Patrick J. Christian, “Brokering Peace in Sudan,” Special Warfare Bulletin 19, no. 2 (2005): 6–13, http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/christian.pdf. 29. Francis Stewart, Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies (New York: Palgrave, 2008); Ted Robert Gurr, Peoples Versus States (Washington DC: USIP, 2000). 30. First used by Freud in The Taboo of Virginity (1917). Narcissus was the figure from Greek mythology whom the Goddess Nemesis condemned to fall in love with his own self-image of beauty and coined the term narcissistic or love of self to the exclusion of others; Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002). Additional explanations can be found in Vamik Volkan “Large-Group Identity: Border Psychology and Related Societal Processes,” Mind and Human Interaction 13 (2003): 49–75. 31. Mahmood Mamdani, interview by Isma'il Kushkush and Islam Online, Khartoum, Sudan, February 25, 2009, http://pulsemedia.org/2009/02/28/darfur-a-war-of-definitions. 32. Idris, Conflict and Politics of Identity in Sudan, 1. See Heather J Sharkey, “Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race,” Oxford Journals, African Affairs 107, no. 426 (2008): 21–43. 33. Howard F. Stein, “Adversary Symbiosis and Complementary Group Disassociation: An Analysis of the US//U.S.S.R. conflict,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 6, no. (1982): 55–83. Vamik Volkan, “Transgenerational Transmissions and Chosen Traumas: An Aspect of Large-Group Identity,” Group Analysis 34, no. 1 (2001): 79–97. 34. Thomas H. Eriksen, “Ethnic Identity, National Identity, and Intergroup Conflict,” in Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Resolution, eds. Richard D Ashmore, Lee Jussim, and David Wilder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 42–68, 66. 35. Leon Festinger, A theory of cognitive dissonance (Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 1957). 36. A caveat to this is that now, some Arab tribes in Darfur are beginning to join the movement against the Khartoum-based government. Parish describes this process in terms of growing awareness of their hierarchical placement in the larger society: “Every time social actors ‘know’ themselves and their society in terms of particular models of self and society, they must ‘not know’ themselves and their world in terms of other models (of and for reality) available to them.” As some of the Arab tribes in Darfur observe their African counterparts fighting for change in the social hierarchical system of ordering, they realize the larger playing field that they are on the bottom of and join in the larger struggle; Steven M. Parish, Hierarchy and Its Discontents: Culture and the Politics of Consciousness in Caste Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 86. 37. The Misiryyah tribes of southern Kordofan were accused of opposing the land division scheme of South Sudan government because they wanted to help North Sudan government retain the oil fields in Abyei, an area claimed by both the Dinka Njok and the Arab nomadic tribe of al-Misiryyah. The actual issue is not oil but grazing fields needed by the Dinka Njok for agrarian expansion and by the al-Misiryyah for nomadic herding. The issue takes on an identity conflict patina because the al-Misiryyah are traditional Bedouins for whom farming is an incompatible occupation for sustaining their cultural identity and maintaining and extending their historical narrative. The fact that their situational needs are being used instrumentally by the North Sudanese government will not prevent them from resorting to violence if necessary to maintain their way of life. 38. August 2004–February 2005, research, investigation and mediation locations: northern Darfur, including Tine, Karnoi, Furawiya, Umm Berro, el-Dur, Um Sayala, Mellit, Kutum, Bardie, Korma, Kabkabiya, Tawilla, Birkat, and al-Fashir; western Darfur locations included Kulbus, Bersiliba, Tandubaya, Gigira, el-Geneina, and Zalinjie; Jebel Mara locations included the villages of Mooney, Niertite, Thur, and Golo; southern Darfur locations included Nyala, Kalma, Isha, Ed-Daein, and Tulus; and Chad locations included the villages and refugee camps of Bahay, Bamina, Mille, Kounoung, Iriba, AmNamak, Guereda, and Farchana. My mode of travel for the eight months of work in Darfur consisted primarily of a Toyota Land Rover, with occasional MI-17 helicopter movements and twice by camel. 39. Mohammad A. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of Islam; Samiah E. Baroni, “Color Me Green: Saudi Arabian Identity and the Manifestations of Power,” PhD dissertation, Florida Atlantic University Department of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Boca Raton, Florida, ProQuest, May 2007. 40. Armstrong, Muhammad, 34. 41. Jahiliyyah, irascibility: an acute sensitivity to honor and prestige; arrogance, excess, and a chronic tendency to violence and retaliation. “Jahili people where too proud to make the surrender of Islam; why should a karim moderate his behavior and act like a slave (abd), praying with his nose on the ground and treating the base-born like equals?”(quoted from Armstrong Muhammad, 67). 42. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of Islam. 43. Armstrong, Muhammad, 12. 44. The Arab elites in power on the Arabian Peninsula used their tribal lineage as a rite of placement in the Islamic religious hierarchy to accord them rights of interpreting the Qur'an and especially the Hadith. For the Monarchists, their claims of lineage to the family of the Prophet gave them their theoretical base of legality for ruling their particular political state as God's representatives over their tribes and lands. These claims to be physical descendants of the Prophet provided them with a powerful weapon to maintain ruling authority over the Muslim ummah, not the least of which is the expected arrival of a final savior of Islam: “It has been (accepted) by all the Muslims in every epoch, that at the end of time a man from the family (of the Prophet) will, without fail, make his appearance, one who will strengthen Islam and make justice triumph. Muslims will follow him, and he will gain domination over the Muslim realm. He will be called the Mahdi,” Muqaddima by Ibn Khaldun, 14th century historian famous for his pioneering work in philosophy of history. Subsequent religious opinions emanating from the World Muslim League in Mecca have reaffirmed the belief in a Mahdi as central—even obligatory—to the Islamic faith. Entries in the Qur'an provide a detailed description of the expected Mahdi in terms of genetic provenance of lineage to the original Prophet Mohamed: (a) he will be an Arab, from the clan of Banû Hãshim started by the great-grandfather of Mohamed (Hashim), who was of the Quraysh Tribe, and of the Adnani Tribal Federation, (b) he will be from the descendants of the Prophet Mohamed through his daughter Fatima; and (c) he will be the descendant of Husayn, son of Fatima and Ali. Thus Arab lineage is of paramount importance in establishing reverence within the Islamic ummah, despite claims to universalist egalitarianism. 45. Geography in Islamic idealization consists of the Holy sites of Mecca (burial site of Ishmael, son of Abraham, who links Arabs to God by right of paternal lineage) and also, the Haj or Journey, began as the circumambulation of the Holy Rock of which was to the of the Arabian Peninsula on an by the Muslim in Islamic idealization to the and and well such as the one at the Holy Rock in by God in to the life of and his them from the in Darfur, I was with an of the like Major were Muslims who These an of establishing the of the to and were to on religious or by both African and Arab Sudanese Fur African Muslims not accord their African or Arab Muslims the of religious despite their of ethnic with the team a over such with the African Fur Arab Sudanese to Arab or right of lineage over African Mecca is the site of the an the a nearly in the of the Arabian Mecca was a of significant importance to all tribes in the Arabian Peninsula long the Prophet Quraysh tribe over the site and a and religious to importance was the or which in the of a and that the Arabian tribes a With the and of Islam by the of the historical of the Arab peoples was the and the of a of to and his son and Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Bamyeh, The Social Origins of As in the practice of Islam changes to cultural and in Islamic practice in the and Africa that Arab Islamic work to is in the to Rebel by Saudi Ibn the of Islamic International of The of in by A. (New York: Press, to the practice of Islam in that in his military to on Arab to religious and practice in rebel held The to the Islamic made with the as cultural were to make way for a of Arab Islam. The of the importance of the as for the as a Arab. The of the the of African that in a Arab identity despite in or For explanations of and by Howard Stein, a of historical cultural at the University of in this area of Howard Stein, “The of the of International of Social 2010, (accessed October 2010). See “The of The Psychoanalytic of Journal of Psychoanalytic and Understanding as of History: A Psychoanalytic Psychoanalytic Review Prunier, Darfur, The Ambiguous by a number of psychological sociological can some of the of tribal and H. and Daniel J. Social CA: States A (New York: Studies in the of E. and of Identity Journal of and Social Psychology 3 E. in Social Prunier, Darfur, The Ambiguous Flint and De Waal, Darfur, A Short History of a Long as use of tribal and placement in the social the Arabs that Islam is and they see as a of like the of the who have the right by and as of the Holy As those Arabs of Darfur hold a hierarchical within the Muslim ummah, to those Arabs is and genetic from the Prophet is to the tribes of The importance of this placement within the of the Muslim which the of of the Prophet and his of the called the The a physical between and by establishing a lineage of between Mohamed and the This is through other Ishmael, the of the The the between Islam and the to this family which and his of tribe in of his and and Ted Robert Gurr, Rebel University Press, Islam is in in the and North Africa from the Social of This political power as well as placement within the larger identity of the Muslim Minni the of the Fur dominated Sudan Liberation Abdalla He is from the African of the Tribe, a clan that was by Zaghawa, because the clan had some and were by as not Flint and De Waal, Darfur, A Short The to their African and Islamic identities them within the larger tribal social that a by against the Islamic of the An is the of Abdel of the in Khalil the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in the conflict while in the for a in at from political in the was in to the of the by a group of the National Islamic Front that on to the People's Congress Party led by the Hassan the of A is from the of the 66. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of 3. from in the South Northern Darfur. Bamyeh, The Social Origins of historical such as of provide a of tribes as they from way of life to life of an or a and tribes on or For from to the of was a Bamyeh, The Social Origins of Ibid. and A for in International Sudan Studies for and Islamic University of M. and Islam: and Prunier, Darfur, The Ambiguous The of Identity These are that I from eight months of while in Darfur. For a see Francis M. War of Conflict of in the Sudan (New York: The and Identity and the of October 11, and Intergroup Conflict,” in Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict eds. Richard D Ashmore, Lee Jussim, and David Wilder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 22. of and Ethnic in University of Press, Howard Stein, The of Culture (New York: Press, H. Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: and 18. Volkan, Stein, The of Culture, Christian, “Brokering Peace in 86. Prunier, Darfur, 12. or slave or black used by the and Popular Forces to refer to tribes. or of the in Islam or to the African tribal included in their life and practice of Islam. Prunier, Darfur, 14. 41. The term is from the The and the one of the to the he he not them an of to cognitive for for and and Group in Genocide and in Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict eds. Richard Ashmore, Lee Jussim, and David Wilder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), Eriksen, “Ethnic Identity, National Identity, and Intergroup Conflict,” Stein, The of Culture, Arab tribal that the original Arab and of northern Sudan most have been part through by way of the Arabian Peninsula, Muslim are in that the northern Arabs called are the of the by the southern is a term for without to placement in Arab social and is a larger Arab of the or Stein, “Adversary Symbiosis and Complementary Group and and Parish, Hierarchy and Its Christian, “Brokering Peace in McDougall, The Group J. and Charles and DC: American Press, Lindholm, Culture and Identity, of this psychological at the individual is the Arab Ali Mohamed Ali Abdel Ali as he was the Saleh and was by the for and in Ali was an not an Arab. He up in the African tribe but as an Flint and De Darfur, A Short to of his Ali a for all peoples and the in Darfur. is a used to the in to in the or of or other is one of the most forms of Richard is the of the E. M. for and at the University of Paul is a National Daniel and of with the Dalai Lama to the and to The is a growing body of on the physical effects of physical and psychological conflict on the of the this research, can be the of social in conflict to be to conflict without The psychological of the the separation of social from the as doing the from the society that him, a that can of separation and to and The in 5. and to Journal of (2005): 2. The needs theoretical was by and and was on the Human Development and that needs be or A and Martin and Human in Human and eds. A. (New York: 18. “The of National Identity in Conflict in Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict and Conflict eds. Richard Ashmore, Lee Jussim, and David Wilder (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), M. “The of in eds. J. and Journal Press, Patrick J. Christian, to Tribal Raton, Press, are and the like by Arab Armstrong, Riesman, The Person and the Life Cycle in African Social Life and Lindholm, Culture and Identity, the of the of Anthropological in American

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