Darfur
Darfur for Dummies
by Mik Awake
If you're anything like us here at The Inquirer, the utterly baffling conflict that continues to rage in Darfur is about as clear to you now as the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream was in high school. Like many, you're probably at a loss to explain who is fighting whom, who are the victims, and what's at stake.
It seems as though every time someone attempts to take a step back and decipher the situation, the coverage only makes sense (like many Shakespearean dramas) while you're reading it. But after you put away the article, magazine or treatise, all sense eludes you.
Fret not, for today The Inquirer has assembled a Cliffs Notes version of the conflict that, since 2003, has become the first genocide of the 21st Century. Or: the world's most urgent humanitarian crisis. Or: simply, Darfur.
Setting
Sudan is a large country in northeast Africa. Darfur, roughly the size of France, is in the western part of Sudan. Darfur is populated mainly by subsistence farmers.
Actors
Al-Bashir, the Warrior King: Arab; 62 years old. Military leader of Sudan. Lives in the capital, Khartoum.
Janjaweed, the Evil Horsemen: Government-backed henchmen. Commonly employ such tactics as "scorched-earth policy," burning entire villages, raping and enslaving women. As Samantha Power describes them in her gripping New Yorker piece of 2004, the Janjaweed are:
Arab militiamen who have carried out much of the pillaging, killing, and raping in Darfur. These men, who receive orders on Thuraya satellite phones, have joined up with the Sudanese Air Force and Army . . .
The Darfur People: Black Africans. Muslim subsistence farmers. At the hands of the aforementioned Evil Horsemen, over 2,000,000 are now displaced, spread across western Sudan and neighboring Chad. Anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 are dead.
The...
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