Darfur Genocide
The Darfur genocide began in 2003 when two rebel movements, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, attacked government installations in the western region of Sudan. Their grievance was old and specific: Darfur had been systematically neglected by Khartoum since independence, drought and desertification had sharpened competition between settled farming communities and nomadic herders, and the government had consistently armed one side of that competition. The state's response was to arm it further. Rather than deploy the regular army against an insurgency in difficult terrain, Omar al-Bashir's government mobilised militias recruited from nomadic Arab groups — the Janjaweed — and gave them weapons, money, impunity and air support. The campaign that followed targeted the civilian population of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa communities from which the rebels drew. Villages were bombed by Antonov aircraft and then burned by horsemen; wells were poisoned, crops destroyed and livestock taken; rape was used systematically. Some 300,000 people are estimated to have died, most from displacement, hunger and disease rather than direct violence, and around 2.7 million were driven from their homes. The United States called it genocide in 2004. The UN commission of inquiry in 2005 found crimes against humanity and war crimes and declined to find genocidal intent, and referred the situation to the International Criminal Court. The Court indicted Bashir in 2009 — the first sitting head of state it charged — and added genocide counts in 2010. He was overthrown in 2019. Fighting resumed in Darfur in 2023 under the Rapid Support Forces, the Janjaweed's successor.
- Category: Social
