Mamdani's 'Settlers', 'Natives', and the War on Terror

Mahmood Mamdani's latest contribution as a public intellectual has produced more controversy than any other book on the Darfur conflict. This is largely because his book is not primarily about Darfur; it is about America. Readers who would like to follow the detailed critique of Mamdani's book,1 and his defence, can go to the blogspot, ‘Making sense of Darfur’.2 I do not wish to repeat in detail the criticisms of historians such as Martin Daly and Sean O’Fahey, but will confine myself to a brief comment on three aspects of Mamdani's argument: that it was the British who ‘racialized’ Darfur by identifying its inhabitants as either ‘settlers’ or ‘natives’; that there is no direct connection between the war in Darfur and the civil war between Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) that ended in 2005; and the role of the War against Terror in the international response to Darfur.

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