The Social Structure of Darfur

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF DARFUR

A Report

to

Andrew Natsios

Special Presidential Envoy to Sudan

by

John Weiss

with

Divya Bali

Julia Becker

Elvir Camdzic

Charles Marchant

Janet Massa

Robert Vainshtein

Denise Ziobro

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF DARFUR

Principal Findings:

1. Until at least the 1980s, primary ethnic identifications such as Fur, Um Jalul, Baggara, Massaleit, Zaghawa, Beni Halba had a considerable degree of fluidity. There was a significant degree of intermarriage and "absorption" among the different tribes.

2. Ethnic differences are mostly socially constructed, not biological. At the same time, these ethnic differences [ethnic "markers" of difference] can constitute the most important operationalized characteristics of a population, however fluid identities have been in the past. In the Darfur case, as in the case of South Sudan, they have become the subject of manipulation by political leaders who may in fact be using them as weapons in the pursuit of other goals. If an ethnic designation becomes a label which makes the labeled group a target, then past fluidity, or alternate meanings of the marker --Arab as anyone who speaks Arabic, Arab as someone wealthier, nomadic, with claims to a higher culture, or lighter-skinned --become problematic elements in the situation.[1] In some cases the variations in the use of the term can become sites of refuge for those wishing to avoid confronting the fact that "Africans" , non- Arabs, are being targeted by local forces because they are seen as Africans, blacks, zurqa, abd, Fur, Zaghawa, Massaleit, Daju.

As the American sociologist W. I. Thomas said long ago, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences," however mistaken their definition may seem to outsiders. Thus elements within the GoS primarily interested in the monopolization of power and resources, with its accompanying marginalization and domination of non-elite groups, are nevertheless willing to cooperate with other elements within that ruling group who privilege racialist notions in which the Arabization of Darfur and the maintenance of Arab supremacy throughout Sudan are the primary objectives.

The emergence of Arab rebel groups, which by the fall of 2006 had at least one thousand members, illustrates the spread among Darfuris of the realization that for many of the most powerful in Khartoum, marginalization was the principal goal of its policies with regard to that region, not the protection of Arabs.

3. In the light of the above, the claim that accusations of genocide against the GoS and its operatives in Darfur crystallize cleavages and generally make matters worse seems open to serious question. "You in Khartoum are committing genocide against the Fur" is a statement that in no way precludes the maker of the statement from simultaneously holding additional or subsidiary views such as: 1. Part of that crime is the radical diminishing of a Fur culture that necessarily included multiple and beneficial relationships with Arab groups 2. "The gens in your genocide is in fact plural, and includes not only our Zaghawa, Massaleit, and Arab brothers as distinct groups, but also the people and culture of Darfur seen as a single whole. Hence the importance of our demand at Abuja that Darfur be reunified, united administratively as one region, a demand you were careful to reject."[2]

If one had to designate a single most important ideological source of the crystallization of cleavages in Darfur, it would be the racialist and supremacist fulminations of the "Arab Gathering" and its originators, proponents and "enforcers" such as Muammar Gaddafi, Acheikh Ibn Omar, and Musa Hilal.[3]

SUMMARY REPORT

Ethnic Identifications

Descriptions of Darfur social structure meant for the suddenly interested reader, and even sometimes for specialists, usually begin with lists of ethnic groups designated as "peoples" or "tribes." The shorthand summaries mention Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit (Massalit), grouped as Africans or "non-Arabs", usually counterposed to an undifferentiated population of "Arabs".

As stated in the Principal Findings section, this summary picture is not entirely misleading. In those Darfuri villages with multicultural populations between 2003 and 2005, to be an Arab usually meant that one was spared death or uprooting. When in 2005 a journalist visiting refugee camps in Chad questioned the claim that the disaster could be explained as a slow motion pogrom driven by anti-African intent, a woman victim immediately asked him "how many Arabs do you see here in the camp?"[4] In 2005 and 2006, rebel movements suffered splits "along tribal lines", with accounts of the splits often pitting the Fur Abdul Wahid el Nur against the Zaghawa Minni Minnawi.

Certainly the breakdown by whole peoples gives a better picture than the one reported by ICG analyst John Prendergast in a lecture at Cornell University on 28 March 2007. He noted that early reports about the Darfur disaster by journalists new to Darfur claimed that the struggle pitted Muslims against Christians. They had lifted the dominant (and not entirely accurate) explanatory template from South Sudan and applied it quickly to virtually all-Muslim Darfur.[5]

Experts on Darfuri society can of course offer more articulated and nuanced analytic schemes. We present examples here.

Alex De Waal in 2005:[6]

1. Major Non-Arab Groups

FurKeira

Kunjara

Others

Tunjur

ZaghawaTuer

Galla

Kabja

Zaghawa Bedeyat

Others

Masalit

Berti

Meidob

Birgid

Daju

Borgu

Tama

Gimir

Beigo

Erenga

FellataHausa

Fulani

Um Bororo

FertitKara

Binga

Others

2. Major Arab Groups

(a) North and West Darfur (mostly Abbala/camel herders)

RizeigatMahamidAwlad Sheikh (divided into:

Um Seif al Din, Um Jalul)

Awlad Yasin

Shotia

Awlad Zeit

MahriyaEteifat

Others

Ereigat (sometimes classified as section of Rizeigat)

Misiriya(northwest Darfur, Chad)

Zayadiya

Beni Hussein(partly Baggara)

Beni Halba(north-west Darfur, Chad)

Salamat(many sections in Chad)

(b)South Darfur (overwhelmingly Baggara/cattle herders)

RizeigatMahamid, Nawaiba and Mahriya

MisiriyaTerjam (also Hmur and Zurug, in Kordofan)

Beni HalbaAwlad Jabir

Awlad Jubara

Ta'aisha

Habbaniya

Ma'aliya

Alex De Waal and Julie Flint in 2005:[7]

3. The Camel-herding Abbala Rizeigat of Darfur

SectionSubsectionClanRuling Family

MahamidAwlad Sheikh/Awlad MablulHilal Abdalla

Um Jalul

Awlad BileiliIssa Jalul &

Junis Abdalla

Four other

clans

Awlad Sheikh/Juma Mohamed

Um Seif al Din

Awlad RashidAdam Ja'ali

3 Other Subsections

Mahariya9 subsectionsAdud Hassaballa

Eteifat5 subsectionsAbdalla Jadalla

Ereigat5 subsectionsJibriil Abdalla

Some of the blurrings of our knowledge of the ethnic makeup can be seen in the terminological puzzles and gaps in these tables, which are nevertheless probably the best attempts at a taxonomy of the Darfur population now available. De Waal and Flint's list of groups assigned to particular janjawid camps lists Gardud in South Darfur as set up for "Sa'ada and Baggara Beni Halba", but the Sa'ada are listed in none of the tables. Table 2. lists the Misiriya "Section" as having members in Chad as well as in Darfur, but Table 1., from the same source, does not point out the similar situation of the Zaghawa, who also have members in Chad. Africanist René Lemarchand has pointed out, moreover, that clan memberships within the Zaghawa, especially the Tuer-Bedeyat rivalry, have been important in influencing the politics of Chad's Zaghawa President, Idriss Déby.[8] Collins and Burr refer to the Bedeyat at several points as a separate group distinct from the Zaghawa, not one of its subgroups as in Table 1.[9] Adam Mohamed's 2004 study of the Abbala (camel-herding) Rizeigat Arabs lists five "subclans" as important "identity groups" --he uses this encompassing term in the way De Waal uses "section" and "subsection"--within the larger Rizeigat category: Mahamzed, Mahriyya, Irangat, Itaifat, and Aulad Rashid. [10]De Waal's Table 2., however, lists Eteifat as a subset of the Mahriya and does not include Irangat, Aulad Rashid, or the Shattiya and Mahadi named later by Mohamed as "smaller subclans". Mohamed lists the Fellata as Arab whereas De Waal lists them as non-Arab. [11] Maps purported to list the 'land" (dar) of each identity group or tribe also show wide variations and contradictions.[12]

Differences in life-style help to distinguish the larger groupings. Non-Arabs like the Fur are sedentary farmers (some of whom, however, have recently begun keeping herds of livestock), whereas Arab groups are pastoralists. Many of the southern Baggara Rizeigat are no longer nomadic, thus contrasting in a major way with other Rizeigat. The major exception to the rule that non-Arabs are sedentary farmers is the Zaghawa, who are camel-herders almost always described as non-Arabs. The two divisions of the Rizeigat people, Baggara (cattle-herding) and Abbala (camel-herding) have played contrasting roles in the current Darfur conflict. The Abbala Rizeigat, almost always described as lacking an official territory (dar) such as was granted to all other groups, have contributed a proportionately much larger contingent of janjawid than have their Baggara Rizeigat cousins.[13]

Perhaps the most useful basis for evaluating the ethnic divisions acting as agents of group formation in Darfur is to superimpose upon the "primordialist" search for lifestyle, blood-relation, fictive common ancestors, language, religious brotherhood membership, or geographical factors a consideration that, for the purposes of policy making, a "tribe" is above all a political unit, as are often its subdivisions[14].

Population Sizes of Different Groups

The difficulty of determining precise sizes for the ethnic groups named above was discussed in the previous report, "Sixty Per Cent Zaghawa?" The authors appreciate fully the role of size claims in any negotiations among Darfuris over the allocation of political power. We are continuing our analysis of the last census, that of 1982. At this point we can be confident only about relative sizes and rough estimates of population.

The Role of History

Any survey of Darfuri social structure that bases itself solely on a taxonomy of ethnic groups risks reducing its usefulness for policy decisions in a number of ways. In the first place, the resulting analysis is far too static. Tapping into research concerning Sudanese and Saharan-sahelian history is crucial to the understanding of the sources of resistance to change or the origins and direction of the current revolt;

1. The importance of the West-East axis of development, stressed by De Waal and Collins, cannot be appreciated if one is captured by what those authors consider the "Nilocentrism" of much of the scholarship and analysis during the last century. Several authors have pointed out that the strong sense of Darfuri identity exhibited by all parties has its origins partly in the strong sense of differentness from the North-South axis of culture along the Nile. The Fur sultanate ruled the region from the sixteenth century until 1916, with the exception of a period of Turco-Egyptian and then Mahdist control at the end of the 19th century. This Fur-Kaira Sultanate, ruled by an elite of both Fur and Kaira (Zaghawa) families, traced its ancestry to the Prophet, just as did Arab sultanates. Like its Arab analogues to the East, it participated actively in the slave-raiding and slave-trading that brought wealth and power to all regimes in the region. Darfur's Islamic roots may be as much the result of influences from the jihad of Othman Dan Fodio (originating in what is now Nigeria) than from proselytizing from Khartoum or Cairo. The practices of Darfur's Sufi brotherhoods, such as the Tijaniyya, more closely resemble those found to the west and north in the sahel/Sahara belt than they do any Nilotic Sufism.

2. The Darfur sultanate held periodic festivals, open to all its peoples, Arab and non-Arab. These are often evoked in accounts of the "good old days" when Darfur was one. With regard to the formation of a Darfuri identity, they seem just as important as the judicial and administrative acts of the Fur, the British, or the Sudanese Khartoum regime.

3. The fluidity of identities in Darfur, at least up to the years when conflicts took on the racist tone of the Arab Gathering proponents, cannot be appreciated without some mention of the process whereby groups absorbed other groups. This happened with the Fur absorption of its subordinate Fertit peoples south of the Jebel Marra, the Fur "homeland." Intermarriage between the Zaghawa-Kaira elite and the Fur elite was also common.

4. A examination of Darfur's 20th century history indicates that the previous Section 2.'s conclusion that a "tribe" can best be viewed as a political unit needs to be joined to an awareness of the history of the political manipulation of the tribal hierarchies, especially the "tidying up" of ethnic identities and tribal allegiances in the 1920s and 1930s. The "shoring up" of the authority of the pro-British nazir, Madibbu, and the introduction of British-influenced notions of land ownership produced new blends of custom and colonial law, new bases for authority:

There was sufficient free land, and a strong enough tradition

of hospitality to settlers, that by the 1970s all "dars" in south Darfur

were ethnically mixed, some of them with very substantial populations

from the drought-stricken north. By custom, settlers were obliged

to adhere to the customary laws of the dominant group. Dar owner-

ship is as much concerned with power hierarchy as with ac tual

usage of the land.[15]

The study of Darfur's history thus can contribute to an assessment of the strength and composition of an all-Darfuri identity as well as the strength and various customary and modern components of power and authority.

Need for a More Inclusive Approach

On the other hand, the weight of history can be overestimated. A focus on the problem of which clans are subordinate to which tribes, or which tribal officials draw their authority from the deepest customary roots rather than from the laws and nominations coming from Khartoum, can become a too limited approach.

In the first place, of course, the Darfur rebellion and genocidal repression have themselves created new political identities and a new distribution of power. Part of this new distribution of power has also been shaped by the massive increase of available weaponry, especially military assault weapons such as the Khalashnikov (AK-47). [16] The young men of the Khalashnikov generation, be they rebels, janjawid, or PDF, will probably not subordinate themselves easily to their nazir, omdah, or shartay, whether that leader was a holdover from colonial times or an appointee of independent Sudan. In short, even if an investigation of Darfur's social structure limits itself to the study of social stratification and segmentation, generalizations about the precise functioning of hierarchies and patterns of authority within the segments will be difficult to determine. Will identity group solidarity overcome individual desires, thus producing conformity to the decisions of the nazir and his council?[17] Are Abbala Rizeigat sheikhs less powerful than Zaghawa or Fur omdahs because they have been less successful in delivering their followers land use rights? Are Weberian categories of any use in assessing the relative power of different sources of authority: traditional, legal, charismatic, religious, democratic-political, etc?

In the second place, political developments both preceding and following the onset of the genocidal counterinsurgency in the summer of 2003 need to be added to the analysis. Secular democratic politics, populist Islamist politics, and political activity by non-customary ethnic entrepreneurs can all produce competing sources of legitimacy. Nor can an approach centered on the historical "long view" give much help in estimating the potential of a recently formed human rights movement in Sudan, as well as the potential ability of the especially powerful and sophisticated NIF/NCP regime to counter that movement.[18]

In the third place, a description of the Darfur population limited to ethnically defined identity groups risks excluding crucially important groups defined, and given a certain solidarity, by their recent common experience:

sheikhs or imams who have acquired expanded prestige through their leadership roles in the IDP and EDP camps;[19]

women who have acquired confidence and political power in camp self-help groups;[20]

human rights workers, from Darfur or neighboring regions, who operate across ethnic boundaries. This category would include Dr. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, head of SUDO, and the humanitarian aid negotiator Suleiman Jamous, in whose survival and rescue may lie the fate of all Darfur;[21]

veterans of the Sudanese Army, either those who deserted or those who have remained in Sudanese service to the present; [22]

students in schools in Darfur, Khartoum, or Cairo, a group highly likely to develop identities reaching beyond their tribal, or even regional, labels;