Power, contested institutions and land: repoliticising analysis of natural resources and conflict in Darfur

ABSTRACT

The fact that attributing the conflict in Darfur to environmental factors masks human agency and therefore accountability for the violence is well recognised. However, this point is often made with reference to government culpability for the violence in terms that reduce the Darfur conflict to one of political and economic marginalisation alone. The academic discourse has thereby created a misleading dichotomy between a ‘depoliticised’ local conflict and a ‘political’ conflict at the national level. This article bridges that polarised debate by investigating the contested institutions across Darfur that are relevant to conflicts within Darfur, to conflict with Khartoum and to regional conflicts notably involving Libya and Chad. Three case studies of conflict in Darfur are investigated with a focus on the complex interplay between solidarities of livelihood (which downplay ethnic divisions) and solidarities of ethnicity (which feature highly in conflict). Regional and national conflicts interact with conflict within Darfur through manipulation of contested institutions, among other means. The paper investigates how divergent framings of natural resources and conflict have been instrumentalised within the global discourse on Darfur, to the detriment of both the search for peace in Darfur and a theoretical understanding of the links between natural resources and conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Darfur
• conflict
• institutions
• natural resources
• peacebuilding
• narratives

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Corrigendum

After almost a year of intense violence, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, gave the first press conference at UN headquarters relating to the Darfur crisis on 2 April 2004.¹ In doing so, he not only launched what would become one of the world's largest humanitarian responses, but also triggered an intense debate to explain a conflict that Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, would later describe as ‘a case study in complexity’.² In his briefing, Egeland described the crisis in terms of ethnic cleansing, forced depopulation and widespread human rights violations. He said that he would not use the term genocide and he did not see the active hand of the Sudanese government in the attacks, although he suggested they did condone them. In August 2004, Sudan-focused academic Alex De Waal corrected Egeland's portrayal of the government's lack of agency when he published what became the benchmark explanation of the conflict, demonstrating how the government orchestrated mass violence by igniting local grievances into ethnic cleansing.³ The strategy, dubbed ‘counter-insurgency on the cheap’, followed an established pattern for putting down unrest in Sudan's marginalised peripheries, in which the government provided weapons and a context of impunity for local militias to clear villages and seize land.

The debate over the nature of the conflict achieved an extraordinary level of international popular engagement, in which distance from Darfur seemed no barrier to deep convictions about what was at stake. Even for those unconvinced of the applicability of the term ‘genocide’, the preeminent issue of government culpability remained. In this context, Ban Ki-Moon was roundly condemned for suggesting in 2007 that environmental issues were also relevant to the roots of the conflict.⁴ Ban's effort to broaden the debate on Darfur in the run-up to peace talks was undermined by his blunt environmental determinism. His comments ignited what became a polarised debate: with some focussing on resource scarcity as a driver of conflict, and others on the genocidal intent of the government of Sudan.

By contrast, this paper takes the complexity of a multi-layered conflict in Darfur as its point of departure. Building on the established framework of the conflict with three levels (local, national and international) the paper subdivides these layers to give a total of six (local and Darfur-wide; sub-national and national; regional and global – see Tables 1 and 2).⁵ Political contestation takes place across all of these levels, and each one has experienced episodes of violence in the last 30 years.⁶ Each level is relevant to understanding the causality of conflict and to the protracted nature of the violence in Darfur. This paper examines the significance of natural resources within Darfur's contested social, customary and formal institutions, and in doing so identifies a more nuanced, more political understanding of their relevance within the multi-layered conflict. The institutional perspective highlights the fact that there is a war among the different communities within Darfur that has been manipulated by government, rather than simply a national war that has manipulated violent actors in Darfur. This fact is of considerable significance in understanding the nature of the conflict and informing the search for peace. In the long term, the contested nature of Darfuri society needs resolution, as much as does the conflict between Darfur and Khartoum. Land and resources are highly significant within this wider contest across Darfur.

Table 1. Levels of conflict.

		Contested issues
Level 3 International	Global (3.B)	Sudan's relationships with the international community; sanctions and access to international finance.
	Regional (3.A)	Wars in Libya, Chad, CAR that have ethnic interlinkages with conflict within Darfur (Level 1.B).
Level 2 National	National (2.B)	Contested polity of Sudan. Sudan's Islamist/secular contest. Power sharing and wealth sharing between Khartoum and Sudan's peripheries. Contested social, customary and formal institutions. Disputed land governance arrangements.
	Sub-national (2.A)	Power sharing and wealth sharing between Khartoum and Darfur. Contested formal institutions.
Level 1 Local – Darfur region	Contesting Darfur (1.B)	Contested identity, power, governance and control of land in Darfur. That is, contested social, customary and formal institutions.
	Local (1.A)	Power, land, natural resources contested within Darfur's existing institutional arrangements.

The academic discourse on natural resources in Darfur shows similar fault lines to the policy discourse. Academics who emphasise the role of environmental scarcity as a driver of conflict in the academic discourse have bolstered the arguments of those taking similar policy positions.⁷ These writers have been vigorously rebutted by a second group who make the important point that ascribing causality for violence to the natural environment masks the culpability of those responsible.⁸ They then focus, almost exclusively, on the culpability of the Government of Sudan for the violence, notwithstanding the warnings of a third group, comprising Sudanese political and social scientists, who state that: ‘there is a danger in the attempt to reduce the complex web of root causes to a single factor; namely, that of marginalisation’.⁹

Critics of environmental narratives, however, tend to adopt more starkly depoliticised narratives of conflict over resources for dismissal than are in fact advocated by most proponents of this view. Verhoeven, for example, considers neo-Malthusian narratives that identify ‘scarcity as the independent variable causing conflict’ – and on that basis, very reasonably, dismisses them.¹⁰ Selby and Hoffman likewise refute a position in which ‘Darfur's “traditional” economy and society are utterly dominated and determined by the availability of water’.¹¹ These narratives have created a false dichotomisation between politically significant national conflict and conflict within Darfur, which is seen as politically insignificant. By disregarding the political nature of the conflict within Darfur, this literature reinforces a Khartoum-centric understanding of Sudan and legitimises the international community's focus on peace-making that favours the elite and the armed.

This paper examines the Darfur crisis and the commentary on the role of natural resources in it, and asks: in what ways has a failure to understand local social and political contestation over natural resources undermined peacebuilding efforts in Darfur?

Three subdivided levels of conflict

De Waal described how local conflict was driven by a national counter-insurgency strategy. In addition, Young drew attention to an international dimension to the conflict caused by the interconnected nature of livelihoods across Darfur and her Sahelian neighbours.¹² However, this framing still falls short of the critique presented by Ahmed, Azain Mohamed and El-Battahani,¹³ who demand greater resolution, particularly with respect to understanding the dynamics within Darfur. This paper therefore contributes a new framing in which the three main levels of conflict identified above are each subdivided to make six levels. Each subdivision represents a narrower or wider geographical scope aligning with a different emphasis of the issues at stake. International is split to regional and global; national and sub-national levels are identified – with the sub-national level focussing on Darfur's marginalisation within Sudan; local is split between immediate inter-group conflicts and a wider contest for Darfur. It is this wider contest for Darfur that has been particularly neglected in the academic discourse on natural resources and conflict.

International: global and regional

Global conflict (3.B) relates to the Sudanese state and its international relations across the world, in contrast to the regional conflict (3.A), which involves neighbouring countries and is relevant to ethnically aligned groups within Darfur. The core issue at the global level is the Sudanese aspiration to be removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, a pre-requisite for gaining access to international finance and achieving a wider rapprochement with the west.¹⁴ The regional conflict, principally involving Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic, has links to the tribal conflicts in Darfur: Libya supporting the Arabs in the 1980s during the Libyan war in Chad; Chad's president Déby supporting Zaghawa in the proxy war from 2005 to 2009.¹⁵

National: Darfur's marginalisation and the contested state of Sudan

At the national level, there were two important factors in the Darfur conflict: the chronic marginalisation of the Darfur region (2.A) and the contestation for the state of Sudan (2.B). In 2003 the Darfur Liberation Front, which had grievances about Darfur's marginalisation (conflict 2.A), changed its name to the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and made an alliance with the Southern Sudanese rebel movement, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to contest Sudan as a whole (conflict 2.B). These political distinctions are relevant to natural resource use as they influence the arrangements for resource governance at the national and sub-national levels. During the 1970s land was nationalised in order to enable a government-led agricultural expansion, notwithstanding local customary land rights. While Darfur was not the focus of this agricultural programme, it was deeply impacted by the governance vacuum created by the ill-fated legal reforms.

Conflict in Darfur

Local conflicts over land, natural resources and powers struggles within the overall framework of customary governance are classified in this study as 1.A. The wider conflict over land, identity and power across Darfur that contests the overall structure of customary and formal governance is categorised as 1.B. Conflict 1.B relates to the long-term overthrow of the historic hegemonies over land and power of the major Sultanates. The governance arrangements and political settlement among the various communities across Darfur in the aftermath of the fall of these sultanates remains deeply contested. Power struggles are played out with a combination of violence and coercion of state and international power.

Interconnected levels of conflict: the nuance of ‘counter-insurgency on the cheap’

Understanding the different levels of conflict in Darfur is fundamental to an exploration of the complexity of the conflict. It is a failure to develop a nuanced understanding of the interaction between local and national conflict that undermines numerous efforts to explain away the significance of natural resources in the conflict. An improved understanding at this point can be developed by reviewing the strategy introduced above as ‘counterinsurgency on the cheap’. In describing the Government of Sudan's track record in putting down unrest in Sudan's marginalised peripheries, De Waal explains: ‘famine and scorched earth [were] their weapons of choice. Each time, they sought out a local militia, provided it with supplies and armaments, and declared the area of operations an ethics-free zone’.¹⁶ However, four observations are needed to clarify the significance of this strategy.

Firstly, the action of local militia needs to be set in the wider context of conflicting groups in Darfur. To suggest government manipulated militia to cause chaos in Darfur, rendering Darfur powerless at the national level, grossly underplays the harm they caused. The government has manipulated Darfuri society over many decades. Arming the militia in 2003 enabled the physical devastation of a much deeper fragmentation of Darfuri society to be expressed. In the conflict and natural resources discourse the violence relating to land tends to be addressed at the superficial level of militia-led land grabs rather than as integral to the deeper contestation within Darfuri society. By contrast, De Waal describes the conflict in Darfur in considerable breadth, for example explaining the fundamental conflict of geographical world views between Arab and Fur as contested moral geographies.¹⁷ In the terms of the framework above, local conflicts (1.A) take place in a wider conflict within Darfur (1.B).

Secondly, rational actor assumptions to explain local conflicts over land in Darfur are therefore inadequate. Identifying livelihoods as a factor driving conflict decisions – such as the decision to seize land or livestock – is an important but incomplete analytical construct. In isolation, such analysis may fail to address the way in which such decisions are embedded in wider societal concerns and understandings. In 2003–2004 there were instances in which orchards were destroyed and the timber left unused, indicating that the destruction was, at times, undertaken for its social significance rather than for material gain. Similarly, the changes in place names, such as Idd El Ghanam (Watering Hole of the Goats) becoming Idd El Fursan (Watering Hole of the Knights), in celebration of the Beni Halba militia defeating Fur insurgents in 1991, further demonstrates the way that De Waal's contestation of ‘moral geographies’ has a substantive role in the pattern of violence. This embedded understanding of land is particularly significant with respect to the way that political Islam has been used to manipulate the conflict. The Islamist assertion that ‘land is from God’ has been leveraged in opposition to the residual authority of the historical Sultanates. This notion was enacted in the context of Nimeiri's conflict with historical authorities in the 1980s. Unruh and Abdil-Jalil also recorded this notion in the narratives of pastoralists appropriating land in the current conflict.¹⁸

Thirdly, as the case studies will demonstrate, conflict in Darfuri society has been manipulated by regional dynamics in addition to national conflict. (In our model, conflict at level 3.B manipulates conflict at level 1.B.)

Fourthly, it is important to note the degree of independent agency of actors in the local conflict. While the critical role of the government of Sudan in driving the devastating violence in Darfur in the early 2000s is beyond dispute, these militia chose to engage in the violence and at a later stage some chose to rebel against the government.¹⁹ Actors within Darfur have made decisions to engage in violence and made allegiances drawing on power plays at higher levels of conflict in addition to the explanation of violence in Darfur being manipulation of lower level actors by higher level actors alone.

An institutional perspective on the contest for Darfur

This paper's argument rests on the proposition that violence relating to the control of land and resources is part of a wider contestation of political power within Darfur. The paper posits that the contest for power in Darfur runs right through its formal, customary and social institutions. By investigating the interlinked nature of these contested power struggles with an institutional lens, it is possible to move beyond simplistic rational actor assumptions that underpin Malthusian analyses of conflict. Social theory posits that solidarity in society is based on the expectation of reciprocity in a social group.²⁰ Social institutions comprise the norms and rules that govern expectations of reciprocal behaviour, hold collective knowledge and provide a sense of identity to the group. It is groups of this type that Johnson discusses, in terms of ‘moral communities’, as forming the basis of patterns of conflict in Sudan.²¹ De Waal's discussion of competing ‘moral geographies’ indicates social institutions framed around land and resources that carry an associated set of values with behavioural implications. This section reviews social institutions in Darfur as fundamental to the patterns of solidarity and conflict and then observes the structure of these through customary and formal institutions.

Social institutions: livelihoods, solidarity and identity

Two groups of institutions have particular significance in Darfur and both have a strong element tied to access and control of land and resources, the first relating to livelihoods and the second relating to issues of kinship and ethnicity. Both groups are relevant to identity and solidarity, whether based on communal livelihood behaviour such as harvesting or mutual defence with the tribal mobilisation of militia. Links between livelihood, identity and place have a particular resonance in Darfur. The largely migratory Arab pastoralist communities are identified in livelihood terms, as baggara or aballa. These designations refer to cattle and camel herders, respectively; but also define groups of tribes and associated locations: Aballa to the north of Jebel Marra and Baggara to the south. In each case there is an association through the social institutions that combines identity, livelihood (and consequently natural resource use) and location. As such, De Waal's attribution of different perceived moral geographies as relevant to the interplay of both ethnic and livelihood identification is reasonable.²²

The second group of overlapping social institutions relates to ethnicity. While ostensibly identities of kinship, these groups have a fluidity that reflects both self-identification and adoption of social norms as defining features rather than kinship alone. At different times both non-Arab and Arab groups have grown by assimilation in addition to organic population growth. Assimilation has operated either at the individual level or through wider sets of people adopting the identities of a larger, more dominant group. The situation is, however, complex. For example, the Berti and Birgid have lost their languages over the last century and although now Arabic-speaking do not identify themselves as Arab; unlike the Mileri, who have in recent decades assumed an Arab identification aligned with the Misseriyya tribe. As O’Fahey observes: ‘Ultimately, Arabs are those who identify themselves as Arab and have constructed a genealogy to prove it’.²³ The significant point for this discussion is how an ethnic identity, and the associated cultural connotations relating to land and to violence, are malleable, contested and variable over time.

It has been widely observed that in peacetime Darfur's prevalent social solidarity has been based on collaboration over livelihoods and co-location,²⁴ whereas in times of conflict ethnicity plays a greater role in defining solidarity. For example, in peacetime, Haaland (in 1972) describes how Fur agropastoralists progressively take on social norms of the Arab Bagarra Beni Halba tribe as their herd size grows and their allegiance shifts to the Bagarra.²⁵ In 1984, Abdul-jalil observes people at the interface of Fur and Zaghawa communities demonstrate a fluidity in their ethnic identification (such as choice of language) when they meet in markets. The mutual engagement on economic activity makes ethnic identity subordinate to the achievement of a shared livelihood objective.²⁶ By contrast, in times of conflict, the recruitment of militia and the payment of blood money and restitution is organised by the tribe, so community boundaries harden according to ethnic boundaries. Abdul-Jalil records two sayings in Darfur that capture the hybrid nature of solidarities in Darfur: ‘blood is compelling’ and ‘co-living is achieved by cooperation’.²⁷

The dynamic and overlapping nature of solidarities based on livelihood and/or ethnicity lies at the heart of the complexity of the patterns of conflict in Darfur. Violence in 2003–2005 saw both widespread livelihood asset stripping (such as livestock theft, destruction of orchards and wells, forced displacement),²⁸ and indicators of ethnic violence such as racist epithets during attacks and widespread sexual violence (which traumatises kinship relations and disrupts ethnic solidarities in addition to the harm to the individual victim).²⁹ Therefore, we observe that while livelihoods relate to the most tangible benefit from violence (more land), it is an ethnic solidarity that is mobilised to achieve this benefit.

Customary institutions: land, leadership and power

Historically, land was controlled by the non-Arab Sultanates (such as Dar Fur³⁰ and Dar Masaleet, a number of Zaghawa Sultantes and others), which had power to apportion land to their own people and to others. Land-use rights (hakura) could be granted to chiefs of the tribe under the Sultan's jurisdiction or to other tribes as guests in the area.³¹ Darfur's tribal institutions centre on the link between the paramount chief and land rights granted to him. Tribes with a paramount chief therefore have land under the chief's authority. Tribes headed by authorities of lower rank have access to land only as guests of other tribes.

In the early twentieth century, the colonial administration appointed paramount chiefs and allocated land for some other Arab tribes, notably the Habbaniya, Beni Halba and Southern Rizaygat (all Bagarra, i.e. cattle herders). It is notable that the leaders of these groups all sought to steer a path of neutrality at the outbreak of the current conflict in 2003.³² The Rizaygat Aballa (camel herding clans north of Jebel Marra) were not granted a paramount chief and the associated land rights, and consequently continue to hold a major grievance with respect to their marginalisation within Darfur's arrangements of land and power. The Rizaygat Aballa were at the forefront of the government backed counter-insurgency and have engaged in conflict with devastating effect, clearing Fur and Zaghawa from large swathes of land.

While the historical hegemony over land may have been with the Fur, Masaleet and Zaghawa, the conflict which peaked between 2003 and 2005 has in, in many places, reversed this, with land now controlled by Arab tribes and/or their militia. Displaced Fur, Masaleet and Zaghawa are often now able to access their land for farming and firewood collection only under tight and sometimes violent control by the Arab tribes.³³

The contested links between chieftaincies and control of land therefore remain fundamental to the conflict within Darfur, as they have been for decades. The displacement of three million Darfuris from their land, with a shift from disputed customary land tenure to the current control still predominantly by violent means and predominantly by Arab tribes, is testimony to this fact. Even if the substantial grievances at the national level of conflict (2.A) were to be resolved, the conflicted governance of land and power within Darfur (1.B) would still need to be addressed.

Formal institutions

The overall struggle for Darfur is also evident in the contested nature of its formal institutions. As the weight of governance arrangements have shifted from traditional towards formal, so have the locations of the power struggles for land and position. Since independence, the power of the Fur has been progressively undermined by the splitting of the region into two provinces in 1974, three in 1995 and then five states in 2013.³⁴

The 2011 Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) created Darfur as a single region and established the Darfur Regional Authority (DRA), chaired by Tijani Sese.³⁵ Sese was governor of Darfur during the Arab–Fur war in the 1980s, and comes from the Fur tribal elite. Paradoxically, at the same time as the single region was established, a government decree designated Darfur as comprising five states. These states tend to have less ethnic diversity, East Darfur, for example, being almost entirely inhabited by Southern Rizaygat. As a result, the ongoing contest over the fundamental nature of Darfur has played out in the chaotic interface between the DRA and the states. When Sese's brother passed away in late 2014, Sese was appointed as a Dimingawi – the highest tier of leadership in the absence of an accepted Sultan.³⁶ Darfur as a single region led by a Fur chief with a court in El Fasher is precisely the arrangement that the Arab tribes have been contesting for decades.

The weak and contested DRA was finally disbanded in June 2016 following a referendum on whether Darfur should remain one region or five states. Amid widespread boycotting and complaints of irregularities, the result was 97% in favour of five states. Suad Fadul, a great-granddaughter of the last Sultan of the Fur, who lives in straitened circumstances in Khartoum, summarised the Fur perspective in her comment: ‘If it was fair and they had given people a chance to vote for one unity, it would be as if the power of our grandfather had returned’.³⁷

Case studies: the role of natural resources in conflict

Having set out an understanding of the holistic nature of the contest for Darfur (level 1.B) and placed this within an overall framing of war in Darfur, this section examines the role of natural resources through three case studies (Table 2).

Table 2. Timeline for different levels of Darfur conflict.

	1970s	1980s	1990s	2000s	2010s
3.B	Cold war geo-politics		Sudan sanctioned by the USA as ‘state sponsor of terrorism’	Western interest in Southern Sudan keeps Darfur conflict low profile 2003–2004. Massive global interest in Darfur from 2005 to 2008. Bashir indicted by ICC 2007.	Darfur fades from global interest. Sudan still seeks end of sanctions.
3.A	Libyan support to Chadian opposition via Darfur from 1973	Libyan war with Chad. Chadian civil war. Gaddafi drives ethnic polarisation of Darfur.		Sudan–Chad conflict 2005–2007 sees each county backing militia.
2.B	Nimeiri in power and abolishes customary governance (1971) and land tenure. Nimeiri makes peace with Southern Sudan.	Nimeiri loses power after drought (1985). El-Sadiq government allied to Gaddafi regime 1987–1989. War with Southern Sudan.	NIF in power. Islamists split in 1999 leaving NCP and PCP.	JEM publish ‘Black Book’ (2000). Uprising by JEM and SLA in Darfur 2003. Massive counter-insurgency 2003–2005.	NCP retain power increasingly focussed around Bashir.
2.A		DLF enjoy brief period of power in El Fasher.	Bolad extends Southern war to Darfur – and fails (1991). Backlash strengthens Arab position.	Uprising by DLF 2002. DPA 2006 (Abuja talks) Sirte peace talks (2007–2008)	DDPD 2011
Links 2.A/2.B and 1.B		NIF oppose Fur and divide Darfur.	NIF appoint Emirs to weaken Masaleet. Suppression of Bolad, uses government backed Arab militia seeking land and power.	Government backs Arab militia seeking land and power as government insurgency.	Failure of government to support DRA leads to its collapse, strengthening five state solution – eroding vestiges of Fur power.
1.B		Arab–Fur war 1987–1989. Arabs create Qoresh 1 manifesto.	Emirs appointed in West Darfur 1995. Arab–Masaleet war – from 1995. Qoresh 2 manifesto (1998/1999).	Arab groups realise ambitions for control over land by displacing non-Arab groups.	Arab tribes consolidate control of land.
1.A	Tensions as Zaghawa move south in context of governance vacuum early 1970s.	Tensions as a result of more congested land, particularly following 1984–1985 drought.	Increasing enclosure of land and tension at times of migration/harvest.	Massive displacement. Erosion of traditional environmental and conflict management.	2013–2015 Increased conflict over land amongst Arab tribes, often controlling land of displaced.
Context	Sahelian drought from 1972. Some Zaghawa move South.	Major drought 1984–1985. Major social upheaval. More Zaghawa move South. Chadian Arabs displaced/migrate to Darfur.		Massive displacement. Arabs gain access to land by force.	Secondary violence amongst Arabs groups over control of land.

Notes: NIF – National Islamic Front; splits in 1999 to form NCP – National Congress Party (led by Bashir) and Popular Congress Party (led by Turabi, an Islamist ideologue). JEM – Justice and Equity Movement; DLF – Darfur Liberation Front, who become, SLA/M – Sudan Liberation Army/Movement; DPA – Darfur Peace Agreement; DDPD – Doha Document for Peace in Darfur; ICC – International Criminal Court; PCP – Popular Congress Party.

The Arab–Fur war since the 1980s: conflicted livelihood and ethnic solidarities

The devastating drought of 1984–1985 created considerable social upheaval in Darfur. Estimates are that 95,000 people died and many times this number were displaced, including some 60,000–80,000 who walked to Khartoum in search of relief – all out of a population of some 3.1 million.³⁸ Ethnic tension had intensified in Darfur's fractious political contest in the years preceding the drought. Fur power was in the ascendency as the Darfur Development Front (DDF), led by the secular Ahmed Dereig, had taken control of the recently established regional government. The drought drove local tensions, as livelihoods were failing in the drought. Farmers increasingly enclosed land to retain tenure, reducing the scope for grazing and transhumant migration of the pastoralists and leading to local conflicts of type 1.A.³⁹ Arab pastoralists therefore perceived a dual threat from the combination of political power of the Fur and changing practice of land use that threatened their livelihood. Access to land and resources was consequently a central feature of the escalating tension in the emerging contest for Darfur (1.B).

Relations between the DDF and the government were also tense as a result of the imposition of a non-Darfuri governor in 1980.⁴⁰ The polity of Sudan was heavily contested (2.B) as a result of the renewed war in the South, now with a strong religious dimension. Dereig appealed to President Nimeiri for emergency assistance, but was rebuffed and fled the country.⁴¹ Nimeiri's failure to provide support as the famine dragged on and led both to his own downfall and to an opportunity for Libyan President Colonel Muamar Gaddafi to gain influence in the wreckage of Darfur. The Libyan convoys that brought famine relief also brought armaments that were used to support an Arab effort in the war that had broken out in Darfur.⁴² Gadhafi was driving an Arab supremacist agenda in the Sahel, having annexed part of Chad a decade before (conflict level 3.A). His vigorous ideological racism was promoted militarily and ideologically across Sudan Libya and Chad, branded as an ‘Arab Gathering’.⁴³ Gaddafi's training of Arab militia in Darfur provided forces for the Arab–Fur war in Darfur (1.B), for the government of Sudan's war in the south (2.B) and for his own ends in Chad (3.A).

This period is fundamental to understanding the ethnic polarisation of Darfur and the slide from cooperation to competition in natural resource use. In our framework it is a point of escalation in the pattern of conflict from 1.A to 1.B.⁴⁴ The Arab-Fur war saw heavy losses among the Fur including around 2500 fatalities, 400 villages burned and 40,000 head of cattle stolen.⁴⁵

The interwoven nature of the two forms of solidarity is apparent in the statements made in the peace negotiations at the close of the Arab-Fur war. The Fur explanation was that it:

began as an economic war but soon it assumed a genocidal course aiming at driving us out of our ancestral land in order to achieve certain political goals … At a later stage it aimed at the destruction of our economic base and the lifeline of our survival by making it impossible to practice agricultural activities by the constant and brutal attacks on farmer and farming communities  …  At the present time we are witnessing yet another and yet more sinister phase of this dirty war: the aim is a total holocaust and no less than the complete annihilation of the Fur people and all things Fur.⁴⁶

Conversely, the Arab Alliance argued:

Our Arab tribe and the Fur coexisted peacefully throughout the known history of Darfur. However, the situation was destabilized towards the end of the seventies when the Fur raised a slogan which claimed that Darfur is for the Fur  …  Some Fur intellectuals in the Dar Fur Development Front have embraced the ‘Darfur for Fur’ slogan. The Arabs were depicted as foreigners who should be evicted from this area of Darfur  …  Ours is a legitimate self-defence and we shall continue defending our right of access to water and pasture.⁴⁷

While the conflict had taken on an ethnic dimension, the peace agreement indicates the significance of the control of natural resources in the dispute. The agreement calls for a reversal of the increasing pattern of enclosure that was undermining pastoralist grazing and migration. It called for an increased government role to strengthen protection of both farmers and pastoralist access to natural resources such as land and water.

The current conflict shows a strong thematic continuity with the Arab-Fur war of the 1980s. Both conflicts add to the list of failed resurgences of the historic power of Fur over greater Darfur. Both have seen widespread destruction of Fur villages and looting of livestock by Arab groups with external military backing.

The Masaleet–Arab war from the mid-1990s to present: manipulated institutions

The Masaleet–Arab war demonstrates a long-term Arab challenge firstly to the authority of the Masaleet customary hierarchy and subsequently to take control of land. The Masaleet authority was contested in 1995, but the realisation of Arab control of land came in 2003–2004, when large numbers of Masaleet were forcibly displaced.

Dar Masaleet is a frontier region that joined Sudan in 1922, six years later than Dar Fur. It has seen even less investment and development, as well as (for a long period) less disruption of the Sultan's control over land and society. Pressure for reform was driven by a changing demographic comprising an increasing Arab population. The area received 200,000 refugees fleeing the Chadian civil war in the early 1970s and another large influx in the 1980s, including 100,000 in 1984 alone, this time fleeing drought in addition to conflict.⁴⁸

In 1995, when reform came, however, it was sudden, brutal and an expression of Darfur's wider ethnic power struggle rather. A new designation that directly challenged Masaleet control of land was introduced, with the appointment of eight ‘emirs’ (the Arabic for prince), together with legislation that would ultimately have led to conditions where the Sultan could be replaced with an Arab alternative. Violence broke out immediately. The Masaleet are estimated to have lost 50 villages and nearly 9000 livestock over the next 4 years.⁴⁹ Violence began to escalate again in 2000 and in 2004 large numbers of Masaleet began to flee to Chad. UNHCR estimated that in the Masterei area alone over 50 villages had been destroyed as part of a broader strategy to prevent Masaleet return. Arab nomads were moving into these areas and occupying the villages.⁵⁰

In 2015, Abdal-Kareem and Abdul-Jalil recorded a focus group discussion with Masaleet, Fur, Daju and Barnu sheikhs in Dar Masaleet explaining that the ‘emergence of a strong trend among sedentary groups in Mornei to define themselves as zurga [blacks] was based on the need to defend their rights over their homelands as well as land ownership’.⁵¹ This explanation illustrates the duality of immediate control over land (1.A) and the wider cultural and ethnic associations captured in the term ‘homelands’ (1.B). Furthermore, the explanation shows how ethnic solidarity for conflict objectives (defence) operates over and above a pre-existing solidarity/identity based on livelihood (sedentary land users, i.e. farmers). Masaleet informants explained that Arab herders justified their appropriation of land on the basis that ‘land in Darfur is owned by the government now, not by the tribes. And this is what the laws have clearly stated’.⁵²

This case study demonstrates how the government has manipulated the wider institutional contest for Darfur by enacting laws favouring the Arab quest for land and power, as well as by its immediate support for violence through the provision of arms.

The disputed role of drought as a ‘trigger’ of conflict: Zaghawa case study

Selby and Hoffmann join Kevane and Grey in questioning the relevance of drought in the 1970s and mid-1980s to the conflict in 2003.⁵³ Drought in the 1970s and 1980s clearly did not operate as a ‘trigger’ for war in 2003, for all that it may have been exactly that in the 1980s. However, the plight of the Zaghawa in the current conflict shows a clear legacy of the impacts of the earlier drought.

Writing about the Zaghawa in the late 1980s, De Waal describes the impact of the earlier droughts:

Since 1969 a combination of drought, desertification and economic change have transformed Zaghawa society … Most people left and many changed their way of life entirely. Before the 1960s few Zaghawa were found outside Dar Zaghawa … Immediately after the first of the recent droughts there were an estimated 250,000 Zaghawa of whom 150,000 were in Dar Zaghawa. From the census of 1983 we can estimate that 82,000 were remaining in Dar Zaghawa.⁵⁴

In the early 1984–1985 drought the Zaghawa formed militias to protect water resources when Arab Aballa pastoralists travelled north. The failed rains in 1987 saw another Zaghawa migration southwards that was repelled by force.⁵⁵

A notable dynamic in the current crisis has been the efforts to remove Zaghawa from communities to which they had migrated during the post-drought periods. Gamizzi, Lewis and Tubiana describe the violence against the Zaghawa in 2010 in East Darfur as ethnic cleansing by militia of host groups only partly under the control of the government.⁵⁶ As a Zaghawa SLA negotiator stated during the Abuja peace talks: ‘The Zaghawa are prime losers if the rebellion fails – it is our land that is most affected by desertification’.⁵⁷

As we have seen with Nimeiri's refusal to provide food aid to Darfur, the role of government is fundamental to the ability for people to cope with the impact of drought. Verhoeven's argument that the famine in Darfur was a direct result of Nimeiri's agricultural export strategy, however, cannot be substantiated. Verhoeven argues that as a result of this strategy ‘thousands of traditional farmers and pastoralists were … driven from their land’, however Darfur was not the location of the large agricultural projects that Verhoeven describes (which were in Blue Nile, Gezira and Kordofan where this displacement was a significant driver of conflict).⁵⁸ Further, the economy of Darfur was only partially integrated with the national economy in 1984–1985, leading De Waal to conclude that ‘it seems likely that the rural poor [of Darfur] were right in laying most of the blame for the famine on the drought and its corollaries’.⁵⁹ De Waal's observation does not undermine our understanding of Nimeiri's neglect of Darfur, but it rules out altogether replacing the impact of drought in Darfur with a narrative of central government culpability.

This paper posits that climate shocks therefore are relevant to conflict in Darfur, but they interact with politics in complex and varied ways. The droughts in the early 1970s and mid-1980s acted as triggers for social unrest in a highly volatile political context (i.e. drought is a trigger at conflict levels 1.A and 1.B). Conversely, in 2003, a political trigger in the form of the approaching North–South Comprehensive Peace Agreement, from which Darfur was excluded, triggered a conflict in which control of land and resources are integral (i.e. a 2.B conflict triggers a 2.A conflict leading to a counter-insurgency, creating conflicts of types 1.B and 1.A).

The notion of a desert moving southwards has been roundly discredited in the scientific literature.⁶⁰ However, both within Darfur, where the impact of the Zaghawa and other groups’ southerly flight from drought is a current reality, and within Sudanese environmental literature, the perception of the desert moving south has in no way diminished.⁶¹

This case study has shown that narratives dismissing the relevance of drought are as problematic as those that rely on resource scarcity in the absence of the social and political analysis. Drought is deeply interwoven with Darfur's social and political history and consequently an important part of understanding the patterns of conflict in Darfur.

Together, the three case studies have demonstrated the significance of natural resources in the contested institutions of Darfur (conflict level 1.B). The literature rejecting any role of natural resources in conflict in Darfur fails to analyse this chronic contest focussing on power and land.

Instrumentalisation of the natural resources and conflict narrative

As Autesserre has argued with respect to Eastern Congo, constructing a narrative of a conflict is a means of enabling or constraining policy options for those who would take action in response to the conflict.⁶² In this section we look briefly at instances in which the narrative relating to natural resources in Darfur was mobilised, or refuted, in a manner that was of political relevance to the higher levels of the Darfur conflict.

The most significant and often neglected deemphasis of the political significance of the Darfur conflict was in 2003–2004, when backers of the Naivasha Peace Process between Khartoum and Southern Sudan kept Darfur out of the international limelight in order to mitigate the risk that Darfur would ‘derail’ the talks.⁶³ Srinivasan has described the foregrounding of narratives of Darfur as tribal violence in the UK government's public statements on Darfur even after their internal correspondence identifies actors specifically targeting government installations (notably the SLA attack on El Fasher Airport in 2003).⁶⁴ International actors’ turning of a collective blind eye to the significance and scale of the violence in Darfur in 2003–2004 explains why Egeland's press statement breaking the news on Darfur at the UN came only at the end of the year in which the violence was at its height. Some 100,000–150,000 had been killed by the time this outburst of violence subsided in early 2005.⁶⁵

Ban Ki-Moon's two Washington Post op-eds⁶⁶ have been the central focus of the debate on natural resources and conflict in Darfur, and are interesting with regard to his political agenda and that of his critics. The first op-ed in June has the headline ‘A climate culprit in Darfur’ and proceeds, incorrectly, to describe a long-term decline in rainfall since the 1980s. (Rainfall has risen since a low at that time.) Fighting broke out, he states, once there was ‘no longer food and water enough for all’.⁶⁷ The piece makes the clearest expression of environmental determinism and was an affront to those focussing attention on the culpability of the government of Sudan. Ban was mollifying Khartoum as he needed the government's cooperation for the mobilisation of the new AU–UN hybrid peacekeeping mission for Darfur and at this stage he had only just received Khartoum's verbal assent after a year of obfuscation.

In August, when he was writing the second article, he was trying to persuade Khartoum to join a new round of peace talks in Sirte, Libya, and to persuade Western observers that these talks should include civil society, traditional leaders and regional leaders in addition to the national political actors. Ban maintains that ‘Darfur is also an environmental crisis – a conflict that grew at least in part from ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water’. However, this article takes a different tack from the earlier piece with an explicit appeal to engage with the complexity of the conflict in which he states that his ‘principal priority’ was for ‘a political settlement’.⁶⁸

Ban's critics, such as the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ (SDC), accused him of ‘dissipating pressure [on the Government of Sudan] rather than building it’.⁶⁹ By this stage Ban was aware that the focus of violence in Darfur had shifted away from the violence between rebels and government forces to violence among tribal groups, predominantly Arab groups shaping the new power dynamics in the aftermath of the displacement of the former land-holding tribes. As has been well documented, the SDC was by this stage considerably out of step with events in Darfur.⁷⁰ Andrew Natsios, head of USAID, was aware of the discrepancy between the situation of relative tranquillity in Darfur and the messaging from advocacy groups that ‘the slaughter continues’.⁷¹ The conflict between international actors and the government of Sudan (level 3.B) was constraining options for constructive engagement with the government. Khartoum was pushing back by being increasingly obstructive to humanitarian organisations in Darfur. Through 2005–2007, the consistent messaging from international organisations was that ‘the situation is getting worse’; however, while that may apply to the operating conditions for foreign agencies in Darfur (with increasing banditry as well as the government obfuscation), it did not apply to the conflict, which was now in the aftermath of the horrific violence of 2003–2005.⁷² Such was the power and volume of the SDC advocacy, however, focussed on holding Khartoum to account for what they argued was genocide, that Natsios warned the State Department against the political risks of confronting the SDC on the content of their messaging in light of the high political risks of doing so.⁷³ The SDC's coalition statement provides a simple and clear framing of the conflict with a corresponding response. It sums up the conflict as ‘The Sudanese government's scorched earth campaign’, noting that ‘violence continues today’ and calling for the ‘perpetrators to be held accountable’.⁷⁴

By publishing in the Washington Post, Ban's appeal to broaden the narrative on Darfur appears to target the SDC's constituency directly; indeed, his first op-ed was a direct response to the SDC open letter published two days previously. The clash between the SDC and Ban was fundamentally over whether the UN should focus on holding the government to account, or should see a broader engagement with the actors and issues in Darfur. Each side was promoting a narrative of the conflict that would justify the strategy they were advocating: broader engagement from Ban, or a focus on Khartoum's crimes by the SDC.

Kevane and Grey respond to Ban's comments directly, as do Zeitoun and Mirumachi, in each case dismissing Ban's environmental determinism, but doing so without recognising Darfur's 20-year history of internal conflict, thereby missing the political significance of land and natural resources altogether.⁷⁵ The dichotomy between the politically significant conflict at the national level and the politically insignificant conflict within Darfur is introduced into the academic discourse at this point, and reappears in subsequent literature. Verhoeven, Selby and Hoffman take longer-term perspectives but with the same reduction of the conflict to an exclusive function of national politics rather than a mix of national and local tensions. As Verhoeven states: ‘Khartoum-led “development” is exactly what caused scarcity and violence in the first place’.⁷⁶ Selby and Hoffman dismiss livelihoods as a source of grievance in Darfur as follows: ‘livelihoods across the Sudans are hybrid, dynamic, globally integrated and arguably therefore also distinctly “modern”. The subsistence tribal peasant no longer exists in Darfur, and has not done for decades’.⁷⁷ This assertion is at odds with both Darfur's livelihood literature and any analysis of local peace processes.

In each case these critics dismiss the significance of conflict within Darfur, having failed to investigate the Darfuri political context (conflict 1.B). This narrative written, at times, as polemic within the contested discourse at the global level (3.B), legitimises the popular SDC-led framing of the Darfur conflict as an exclusively Khartoum-driven conflict (2.A) demanding an exclusively Khartoum-focused response (from international actors at 3.B). These commentators are entirely right to condemn the atrocities committed by the government of Sudan (at conflict level 2.A) and to dismiss Ban's environmental determinism, however the position they take in dismissing conflict within Darfur, and the relevance of natural resources within it, cannot be substantiated.

At the other extreme, depoliticised environmental narratives of conflict were being promoted for political ends in the Arab world. Farouk El Baz, a former NASA geologist with close ties to Egypt's Mubarak regime, achieved extraordinary publicity for his suggestion that groundwater beneath a dry paleolake represented a real contribution to peace in Darfur, notwithstanding its location 300 km into the desert.⁷⁸ Similarly, Colonel Gadhafi dismissed the national political significance of the Darfur conflict, dubbing it a ‘quarrel over a camel’ in the run up to the 2007 Sirte peace talks.⁷⁹ Both framings would have been face-saving for the Sudanese government in the political context of the Arab League.

Conclusion

This paper has drawn attention to the fact that both Darfur as a political entity and the nation of Sudan as a whole are contested. Within the international discourse, debates on the role of natural resources have tended to focus on the national conflict and hence the political significance of natural resources to the violence in Darfur has been neglected. The importance of natural resources comes into focus with the adoption of an institutional perspective, and this highlights the way in which Darfuri society as a whole is contested – a perspective that simplified, rational actor assumptions about resources, resource scarcity and conflict fail to identify. The degree to which some Arab groups have challenged and overturned ancient hegemonies over land and power from Darfur's historical sultanates is of ongoing significance to violence in Darfur. Wide areas of Darfur have unresolved conflict over the control of land, connected to a large degree with the ongoing displacement of more than 2.5 million people.⁸⁰ Resolution of these conflicts is only likely to be viable within a broader process in which contested institutions around land and natural resources are addressed. While these issues need addressing within Darfur they are also deeply interconnected with national and regional political dynamics.⁸¹

As part of a broader peacebuilding process, Darfur's formal and informal environmental institutions need to be reformed and reconstructed over the coming years, or even decades.⁸² Cleaver describes the morphing and recycling of social institutions as ‘institutional bricolage’, which is a notion that has a useful contribution to make in analysing emerging trajectories towards peace in Darfur.⁸³ The role of livelihoods in peacebuilding on the basis of mobilising inclusive social solidarities as a counternarrative to prolonged ethnic violence merits further analysis. Alongside formal dialogues and negotiations, local peacebuilding agreements among militia and tribal leaders are relevant to the emergence and re-emergence of social norms for shared use of natural resources.⁸⁴ Either intentionally or unintentionally, humanitarian responses also contribute norm-forming practices relevant to natural resources and therefore demand attention.⁸⁵

The imperative to address Darfur's internal strife is, of course, entirely concurrent with the need to resolve conflict at national and regional levels. Understanding the role of natural resources within Darfur's contested institutions enables a more nuanced analysis of how the Government of Sudan has manipulated political strife within Darfur and of the role of natural resources in this complex, multi-layered conflict. Where this more detailed perspective has been masked, international policy failures on Darfur have prevailed. During 2003–2004 the world turned a blind eye to Khartoum's violence in Darfur, but later in the period after the most intense violence, Khartoum's agency became the centre of global attention, to the exclusion of other narratives of the conflict. In both instances, failures to engage in Darfur based on informed, objective analysis compounded the suffering Darfuris faced.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.un.org/press/en/2004/egelandbrf.DOC.htm (accessed January 12, 2017).

2. Ban Ki-Moon, “What I Saw in Darfur.”

3. De Waal, “Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap.”

4. Ban Ki-Moon, “A Climate Culprit in Darfur”; “What I Saw in Darfur.”

5. Young, “Livelihoods Under Siege.”

6. At the global level this includes the US missile attack on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical complex in Khartoum in 1998. Other levels as discussed in this paper.

7. Sachs, “Ecology and Political Upheaval”; Homer-Dixon, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/opinion/24homer-dixon.html (accessed July 7, 2017); UNEP, “Sudan Post Conflict Environmental Assessment”; Ban Ki-Moon, “A Climate Culprit in Darfur.”

8. Kevane and Grey, “Darfur: Rainfall and Conflict”; Zeitoun and Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction”; Verhoeven, “Climate Change, Conflict and Development”; Selby and Hoffmann, “Beyond Scarcity.”

9. Ahmed, “The Darfur Crisis,” 12; see also Azain Mohamed, “Evaluating the Darfur Peace Agreement”; and El-Battahani, “Ideological Expansionist Movements.”

10. Verhoeven, “Climate Change, Conflict and Development,” 682.

11. Selby and Hoffman, “Beyond Scarcity,” 365.

12. De Waal, “Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap”; Young et al., “Livelihoods Under Siege.”

13. Ahmed, “The Darfur Crisis”; Azain Mohamed, “Evaluating the Darfur Peace Agreement”; and El-Battahani, “Ideological Expansionist Movements.”

14. Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors.

15. Tubiana and Gramizzi, Tubu Trouble.

16. De Waal, “Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap.”

17. De Waal, Famine that Kills, 87–9.

18. Unruh, “Land and legality”, 113; Unruh and Abdul-Jalil, “Constituencies of Conflict,” 12.

19. Flint, “Beyond ‘Janjaweed’.”

20. Douglas, How Institutions Think, 1.

21. Johnson, The Root Causes, 167.

22. De Waal, Famine that Kills, 88–9.

23. O’Fahey, The Darfur Sultanate, 12.

24. Abdul-Jalil, “Nomad-Sedentary Relations”; Nielsen, “Ethnic Boundaries and Conflict.”

25. Haaland, “Nomadism as an Economic Career.” Fur families modified their gender roles (both men and women milking, not just women as among the Fur), housing (tents rather than huts) and ultimately language.

26. Abdul-Jalil, “The Dynamics of Ethnic Identification.”

27. Ibid., 69.

28. Young et al., “Livelihoods Under Siege.”

29. Nielsen, “Ethnic Boundaries and Conflict.”

30. Dar means land. ‘Dar Fur’ here refers to the traditional homeland of the Fur defined by customary law. ‘Darfur’ refers to the politically defined region comprising the five states of Darfur existing on the basis of statutory law.

31. O’Fahey, “Land in Dar Fur.”

32. It is clear that, although the leaders sought neutrality, elements within the tribal groups joined government-backed militias. Tubiana, “Darfur: A Conflict Over Land?” 74.

33. Buchanan-Smith and Jaspers, “Conflict, Camps and Coercion”; UNEP, “Local Level Agreements.”

34. Abdul-Jalil et al., “Native Administration and Local Governance,” 55.

35. This is a modification of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority established under the Darfur Peace Agreement.

36. Sudan Vision, December 7, 2014. http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/details.html?rsnpid=243595 (accessed April 4, 2016).

37. Salih, “The Princess and the Tea.”

38. De Waal, Famine that Kills, 176.

39. Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, 57; Harir, “‘Arab Belt’ versus ‘African Belt’,” 180.

40. Harir, “‘Arab Belt’ versus ‘African Belt’,” 158.

41. Acknowledging the presence of drought in Darfur would have been an affront to Nimeiri's efforts to position Sudan as the Middle East's agricultural powerhouse. The drought played into an acute political vulnerability in Sudan's national economy.

42. Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, 55.

43. Burr and Colins, Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster, 281.

44. See Harir, “‘Arab Belt’ versus ‘African Belt’,” 173.

45. Ibid., 144.

46. Ibid., 146–7.

47. Ibid., 147.

48. De Waal, “Refugees and the Creation of Famine.”

49. Young et al., Livelihoods Under Siege, 165.

50. Mundt, “Addressing the Legacy.”

51. Abdal-Kareem and Abdul-Jalil, “Contested Land Rights,” 80.

52. Ibid., 81.

53. Selby and Hoffmann, “Beyond Scarcity”; Kevane and Grey, “Darfur: Rainfall and Conflict.”

54. De Waal, Famine that Kills, 93–4.

55. Flint and De Waal, Darfur: A New History, 78.

56. Gamizzi, Lewis, and Tubiana, “Letter from Former Members.”

57. Flint and De Waal, Darfur: A New History, 158.

58. Verhoeven, “Climate Change, Conflict and Development,” compare with De Waal, Famine that Kills, 69; Harir, “‘Arab Belt’ versus ‘African Belt’,” 144.

59. De Waal, Famine that Kills, 110.

60. E.g. Mortimore, Adapting to Drought; Thomas and Nicholas, Desertification: Exploding the Myth.

61. E.g. Abdalla, “Environmental Conditions and Impact.”

62. Autesserre, “Dangerous Tales.”

63. Kapila, Against a Tide of Evil; Cockett, Sudan; Srinivasan, “Negotiating Violence.”

64. Srinivisan, “Negotiating Violence.”

65. Mamdani, “Saviours and Survivors.”

66. Ban Ki-Moon, “Darfur: A Climate Culprit”; “What I Saw in Darfur.”

67. Ban Ki-Moon, “Darfur: A Climate Culprit.”

68. Ban Ki-Moon, “A Climate Culprit in Darfur”; “What I Saw in Darfur.”

69. See: http://savedarfur.org/darfur-activists-worldwide-chide-ban-ki-moon-easing-pressure-sudan/ (accessed February 27, 2017.

70. Flint and De Waal, Darfur: A New History.

71. Hamilton, Fighting for Darfur, 105.

72. Flint and De Waal, Darfur: A New History, 187; Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors.

73. Hamilton, Fighting for Darfur, 106.

74. http://savedarfur.org/about/history/unity-statement/ (accessed July 7, 2017) See Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors for a discussion of why the SDC narrative achieved such potency in the US, notably regarding the analogies of Darfur and Rwanda and the context of the ‘War on terror’.

75. Kevane and Grey, “Darfur: Rainfall and Conflict”; Zeitoun and Mirumachi, “Transboundary Water Interaction.” Zeitoun and Mirumachi accentuate Ban's comments as Malthusian reductionism by subtly misquoting August op-ed and ignoring his appeal to engage with the complexity of the conflict. By referring to the SPLA and to widespread oil reserves they confused aspects of Southern Sudan and Darfur. These observations are significant because they indicate how the comments relate to the debate driven by SDC rather than empirical analysis of Darfur.

76. Verhoeven, “Climate Change, Conflict and Development,” 695.

77. Selby and Hoffmann, “Beyond Scarcity,” 365.

78. Butler, “Darfur Lake Is a Mirage.”

79. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7058671.stm (accessed August 30, 2015).

80. UN OCHA, “2017 Humanitarian Needs Overview,” 2016 http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Sudan_2017_Humanitarian_Needs_Overview.pdf

(accessed July 8, 2017).

81. Tubiana and Gramizzi, Tubu Trouble.

82. Unruh and Abdul-Jalil, “Land Rights in Darfur”; Bromwich, “Nexus Meets Crisis.”

83. Cleaver, Institutional Bricolage.

84. Tubiana, Tanner, and Abdul-Jalil, “Traditional Authorities’ Peacemaking”; UNEP, “Local Level Agreements”; Harir, “‘Arab Belt’ versus ‘African Belt’,” 172.

85. Bromwich, “Nexus Meets Crisis.”