In the mid-1960s, a small group of Darfurian students and tribal leaders formed the Darfur Development Front in an attempt to bring Darfur onto the national stage. They were not very successful. Two factors began to change the realities on the ground—one was the environmental and demographic realities described above, the other was the decision by the then Khartoum government of Ja‘far al-Numayri to abolish tribal rule in Darfur as unmodern. This was a disastrous mistake since it meant that when the great famines came in the mid-1980s, there was none with the authority to mediate between center and periphery.

This loosening of government control was compounded by two additional factors: the drastic hike in oil prices in the mid-1970s basically immobilized the lo-cal administration (in 1976, I borrowed the Province Governor’s Land Rover to do some research because he was the only person who had any petrol), and the Khartoum government’s very naive involvement in the politics of Chad and Libya—an involvement that still persists in Chad.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Darfur was essentially at war with itself; there were bandits/freedom fighters everywhere. By the mid 1990s, Darfur was out of control.

When I visited Darfur again in 1993, the only way to get out of town safely was to have an Irish nurse in the car from “Save the Children”; a female white face next to the driver was an effective protection from the bandits, who knew the passengers were visiting rural clinics. By then the Khartoum government had very little effectual control outside the towns where power was in the hands of the security forces. One government initiative during this period was to divide Darfur into three states (wilaya): North, South and East. This simply multiplied government inefficiency and outraged Darfur sentiment.

The overt politicization of the conflict began in the late 1990s with the emergence of two political movements: the Sudan Liberation Army or SLA (not to be confused with the Southern Sudanese People’s Liberation Army/Movement, SPLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). The latter had links in its earlier phase with Dr. Hasan al-Turabi, the Islamist leader behind the coup of 1989 that brought the present government to power in Khartoum, but who has now been sidelined by his erstwhile followers.

Hostilities “began” in February 2003 with an attack on al-Fashir airport. Khartoum’s response was to arm the northern Arab camel nomads (abbala)—a continuation of a policy initiated in the mid-80s when Khartoum armed the southern cattle nomads (baqqara) as militia (murahilin) to fight the SPLA who were attempting to push into southern Darfur. The chiefs of the Arab cattle nomads have learnt their lesson and have done their best to keep their young men (shabab) out of the present conflict.

From 2003 to the present, Darfur has been subject to all the biblical woes: war, famine, rape (on a horrendous scale), looting, etc., carried out by the Arab nomad militias, the notorious janjaweed (“devils on horseback”), in conjunction with the Sudanese army. Small mountain villages built out of stone and mil- let stalks have been repeatedly attacked with oil barrel bombs filled with stones and pieces of metal. These are tossed from Antonov transports into the center of the villages, killing or maiming mainly women and children. These attacks are then followed by a posse of Janjaweed horsemen charging in to rape or kill survivors, a policy that has been absolutely lethal.

It is difficult for outsiders to comprehend the sheer scale of death, destruction and misery in Darfur. Visiting the IDP camps in 2005 was traumatic; I have a 5-year-old Sudanese grandson in Oslo, Norway, but the 5-year olds in the camps looked nothing like my Bushra.

Khartoum has kept the Western media largely out while the Arab media seems to be generally indifferent. Why is the latter the case? Why are Muslims not more vocal about what is happening in Darfur?

Sadly, racism has become a potent factor

The conflict is presented both locally and in the wider media as one between Arabs and Africans. This fits into the dominant ideology of the northern Sudanese elite who see themselves as Arab and Muslim, despite the fact that many have experienced color-based racism in the Arab heartlands. This ideology is practiced by the janjaweed who burn mosques, kill imams and desecrate the Holy Qur’an.

Although well-documented, I admit to finding this very difficult to understand. After 40 years of involvement with Darfurians, I still cannot tell the difference between an Arab and an African there; and, as I noted above, there are no doctrinal differences whatsoever and all the religious leaders I have known over the years, including a charismatic shaykh of the Tijaniyya, the late Ibrahim Sidi (d. 1999), would have emphatically set their faces against such nonsense.