Posted on September 26, 2012 by Andrew Harmes
Beginning in February of 2003, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice of Equality Movement (JEM) joined forces in the Darfur region of western Sudan to lead an armed rebellion against the country’s central government. What resulted was years of violent conflict that has been said to have left hundreds of thousands of people dead, and millions more displaced from their homes. Although the conflict was driven by rebel groups, the media has blamed most of the catastrophic suffering in Darfur on the Sudanese government and their proxy force, the Janjaweed. The conflict has essentially been described as a ruthless campaign of terror led by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum against the innocent black-African citizens of Darfur. Despite the fact that analysts have attributed much of the fighting since the early years of the conflict to be mostly rebel against rebel, the media has consistently depicted the rebels as groups that were simply protecting civilians from a government-directed onslaught. It is this misleading polarization of good versus evil, this paper argues inadvertently ended up serving as a decisive factor in the prolongation of violence in Darfur.
This paper will begin its examination of the conflict in Darfur by presenting an overview of the driving factors behind the conflict. This section will first review the common grievance-based approach that describes a long held rift between ethnic groups as the root of the conflict, before expanding to include concepts that focus on greed and opportunity, as well as institutional effectiveness. Next, this paper will describe the onset of conflict, the media’s representation of the fighting, the rise of the term genocide, and the massive activist movement that arose to push for increased international intervention. The fourth section will draw heavily upon accounts from analysts based in Darfur during the conflict, in order to present an alternative to the description that is commonly portrayed by media and activists. This is where the argument will be made that the simplified narrative depicted by the media and activists, made peace negotiations difficult and lead to the continuation of violence. Finally, this paper will conclude by presenting a summary of its argument and pose certain questions for future research relating to the conflict in Darfur.
Drivers of Conflict
The origins of the conflict in Darfur have been well documented and discussed. A general consensus has emerged that attributes the drivers of conflict to a complex web of factors, chief among them a process of political marginalization by an Arab-dominated government against a black African citizenry. Going back as far as Sudanese independence in the mid-20th Century, Alex de Waal, one of the world’s foremost experts on Sudan, explains that political power in the country has been held within Khartoum by an exclusive group of wealthy elites.[i] This concentration of power is what de Waal calls the ‘hyper-dominance’ of Khartoum.[ii] Operating with their own interests in mind, the elitist government has developed Khartoum into a regional centre with significant assets and infrastructure while, neglecting peripheral regions like Darfur. This imbalance has meant that approximately half the nation’s income is located in Khartoum, making Sudan one of the most unequal countries in the world.[iii] While de Waal himself does not actually identify Khartoum as Arab and Darfur as African, many other authors such as Scott Strauss explicitly label the conflict according to this ethnic divide.[iv]
This thinking regarding the conflict, although it does include an array of factors such as overpopulation and land issues, puts the most emphasis on extreme inequalities in Sudan and attributes the rebel uprising to the extensive grievances held by the people of Darfur against the central Sudanese government.[v] The SMLM/A and the JEM also used this as a reason, intending to gain sympathy by portraying themselves as victims of government oppression. While grievances certainly did play a role in the conflict by helping the insurgents to recruit members, it is beneficial to direct more attention towards financial aspects in order to understand the motives behind the decision to rebel. Looking at the economic theory of civil conflict, Paul Collier explains that civil wars cannot be fought solely on hatred or grievance; there needs to be an aspect of potential financial gain to make conflict a viable option.[vi] Collier bluntly states that a “rebellion is motivated by greed, so that it occurs when rebels can do well out of war.”[vii] In this context, considering that the Sudan’s People Liberation Movement (SPLM) was moving towards an agreement with the Government of Sudan that would have the south receive increased benefit from their oil reserves, elites in Darfur likely began to see conflict in their region as an opportunity to achieve something similar. While Darfur lacked the infrastructural capacity to produce oil and thus has not actually exploited oil during fighting, oil is still strongly connected to the conflict because of the promise that it presented.[viii] The rebels were certainly aware of Khartoum’s interest in benefiting from potential oil reserves in Darfur, much like they had in Southern Sudan, and therefore mounted an insurgency in large part to try to establish a seat at the bargaining table for the people of Darfur.
Another factor worth receiving attention is the ability of the Sudanese government to effectively govern the country. De Waal does explain that Khartoum was able to dominate the country by retaining resources and wealth, but did this centralization of power translate into effective governance? Zeynep Taydas, Dursun Peksen, and Patrick James explain that state capacity is an essential factor in maintaining peace and that “the absence of good quality institutions and effective governance structure creates suitable conditions for the emergence of a civil war.”[ix] Without state institutions that are able to manage society fairly and effectively, the state becomes fragile and rebellion becomes more feasible.[x]Therefore, it is certainly worth asking whether or not the hyper-dominant centre of Khartoum was able to control peripheral regions like Darfur and maintain stability within the country. The insurgency that resulted answers this question with a steadfast no.
Considering that Sudan is geographically the largest country in Africa, it makes sense that managing the outermost regions might prove to be a difficult task. Peter Bechtold explains that given Sudan’s rainy seasons, sand storms, and lack of road infrastructure, transportation across the country is haphazard at best, meaning that government services and institutions have not been able to make it to places like Darfur.[xi] Without state services such as health and education, outlying areas have been left to their own devices and to this point, Bechtold says that “no government has been able to exercise adequate control beyond a modest perimeter of perhaps 250-300 km from the capital”.[xii] It is this inability of the Sudanese government to extend their dominance outside of Khartoum that creates a situation of minimal national loyalty, making it more likely for conflict to erupt when feelings of marginalization escalate.
Crisis in Darfur
The SLM/A initiated the conflict on February 23rd, 2003 when they mounted a successful attack on Gulu, a town in the Jebel Marra District, in which they killed a number of uniformed personnel. While estimates of the casualty rate vary significantly, with reports ranging from a dozen to hundreds, Gulu gave the insurgency momentum as they continued to attack government outposts in the region over the following weeks.[xiii] The most notable attack came in April of the same year when insurgents attacked al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, killing an estimated 200 government personnel, taking another several hundred hostage, burning nearby barracks, and destroying six small government aircrafts.[xiv] In fact, according to numbers provided by Marc Gustafson, the insurgency got off to an exceptionally successful start winning 32 out of its first 34 battles with government forces.[xv] This success of the insurgents was undoubtedly aided by the fact that Khartoum and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) were focused on dealing with the North-South civil war, as peace negotiations at this time were beginning to heat up in large part due to increased international pressure.
Not only were Sudan’s regular forces already engaged in conflict with the south, but a significant portion of their troops were actually recruited from impoverished regions of Darfur.[xvi] This put the Government of Sudan in a precarious situation in trying to respond to the early success of the insurgency. With limited options, the decision was made to try to quell the rebellion by arming and deploying a proxy force to serve as a counterinsurgency. This proxy force, infamously known as the Janjaweed or ‘devils on horseback,’ combined outlaws from nomadic tribes in northern Darfur who have previously clashed with rebels over land and scarce water resources, with recent Arab immigrants from Chad.[xvii] In return for supressing the insurgency, the Janjaweed was basically allowed to pursue their own agenda without having to face any punishment from the government.[xviii] Therefore, showing almost complete disregard for civilian life in the region, Janjaweed fighters carried out raids on communities suspected of aiding or sympathizing with rebel forces. These raids were bolstered by air support from government fighter jets and brought tremendous destruction as villages were systematically plundered and destroyed, leaving thousands either debilitated, displaced, or dead.
The Media Narrative, Genocide Debate, and Activism
After initial rebel victories, destruction at the hands of the government-backed Janjaweed was the primary war scenario for the first couple of years of conflict.[xix] For example, United Nations human-rights monitor Asma Jahangir claimed that “government-backed militia routinely looted houses, killed unarmed civilians, raped women and executed the wounded in hospitals.”[xx] The Western media picked up on this story and began describing the atrocious humanitarian crimes that were being committed in Darfur. Attention in the Western world was mounted when New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof described the crisis in Darfur as a case of vicious ethnic cleansing with at the hands of the Sudanese government and their “Arab raiders, the Janjaweed, who are killing or driving out blacks in the Darfur region.”[xxi] This narrative clearly draws the line between Arab and African identities and labels them respectively as perpetrator and victim. It is this description of the conflict that came to form public perception, with few Western media outlets deviating from Kristof’s viewpoint.[xxii]
Once this relatively simplistic media narrative had cast the situation in Darfur as a horrific assault against innocent Africans by an evil Arab government, claims of ethnic cleansing quickly morphed into assertions of genocide. Defined by the United Nations Convention on the Punishment and of the Crime of Genocide as acts committed for the “intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial and religious group, in whole or in part,” genocide is a very powerful proclamation that describes horrific man-made humanitarian disasters.[xxiii] Most notable among the claims came in September of 2004 when Colin Powell, who at the time was United States Secretary of State, addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and said that based on a survey of Darfuri refugees in Chad, the conclusion had been made that “genocide had been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility.”[xxiv] A few weeks later, this statement was echoed by US President George W. Bush who reiterated Powell’s conclusion in an address to the UN General Assembly.[xxv] Together, these statements were unprecedented: never before had such senior US officials called an ongoing crisis a genocide.[xxvi]
While some onlookers in the international community thought the U.S. label of genocide might mean immediate American intervention, they were wrong. The American military already had their hands full dealing with the increasingly troublesome wars of Afghanistan and Iraq, and as Alex Bellamy argues, the humanitarian abuses used to publicly justify the Iraq invasion had brought intervention into disrepute and undermined the United States standing as a norm carrier.[xxvii] However, these momentous statements did do two things in relation to the situation in Darfur. First of all, the term genocide took the counterinsurgency aspect out of the conflict and made the crisis in Darfur seem as though it was solely the result of government-initiated violence. Even though it could be argued that the crucial aspect of genocidal intent was missing because the violence, in principle was initiated for the purposes of counterinsurgency warfare, genocide became the central point of the rhetoric associated with the crisis in Darfur.[xxviii]
The second impact of the American decision to label the crisis in Darfur as a genocide, was that it played a critical role in giving rise to one of the largest activist movements in recent history.[xxix] Rebecca Hamilton and Chad Hazlett explain that a campaign to bring awareness to humanitarian tragedies in Darfur had begun early on with Christian Solidarity International (CSI) and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) holding daily protests in front of the Sudanese embassy to attract attention.[xxx] At the time of the genocide claims, however, a massive organization called the Save Darfur Coalition had been coordinated to demand an end violence in the region. In Hamilton and Hazlett’s words, the Save Darfur Coalition quickly emerged as the “central forum for spreading awareness, organizing major events, and occasionally gaining access to the highest levels of the [US] Administration.”[xxxi] The Save Darfur Coalition even attracted the renowned personalities of celebrities like George Clooney, Don Cheadle, and Mia Farrow, who spoke passionately about the destruction in Darfur and helped mobilize even more support. All in all, the Save Darfur Coalition grew into a huge awareness campaign that ended up proving very influential, as it helped shape public discussion and ultimately American foreign policy as well.[xxxii]
Realities of Darfur
The problem with the Save Darfur Coalition is that it projected the same simplistic misperception that had developed from initial media reports on the conflict. The media’s polarization portrayal of good versus evil that began with Kristof had helped push forward claims of ethnic cleansing and genocide, which in turn influenced the emergence of the Save Darfur Coalition. While the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed are certainly responsible for countless crimes against humanity, Bechtold explains that within a couple of years of violence, the rebel groups fragmented and split up into a number of factions due to certain internal disagreements.[xxxiii] This resulted in almost “endless fighting, causing death, destruction and displacement within their local communities, even attacking some UN convoys and NGO relief activists.”[xxxiv] This message is further enforced by Gustafson who states that after 2005, “fractured rebel groups and individual defectors were wreaking havoc in Darfur, becoming the chief perpetrators of violence against civilians and attacks on peacekeepers and humanitarian workers.”’[xxxv]Therefore, not only did the SLM/A and JEM rebels initiate the conflict, but after the first few years they also were responsible for a significant portion of death and destruction that resulted from violent conflict.
Despite these realities, the media and activist groups did not adjust their rhetoric accordingly. In fact, the Save Darfur Coalition continued to ramp up their campaign and even hired lobbyists in Washington to pressure politicians to direct their attention towards violence prevention and immediate troop deployment.[xxxvi] The media continued with their usual reports leading Bechtold to believe that “journalists who wrote about alleged Arab savagery were given print and air time, while those who actually spent weeks rather than days in the area and reported a more complex situation were bypassed in the major media and had to resort to the blogosphere for publication.”[xxxvii] Thus, this was the only perspective regarding the violence in Darfur that was given coverage substantial enough to reach audiences in the West.
With dominant media sources and the Save Darfur Coalition failing to accurately depict the complicated realities of the intrastate conflict in Darfur, the situation remained framed as one in which the Sudanese government was completely the villain. The Rebels were able to fly under the radar and were mostly depicted as either being completely overrun by government forces, or as doing what they could to protect the vulnerable black African citizens of Darfur. In either case, there were clear labels that remained assigned to the two sides even though the conflict had evolved to the point where they no longer applied. This proved extremely problematic. With the international community pointing to the Sudanese government as the enemy, there was no serious pressure against the rebels, and they were allowed to continue operating as they pleased. Certain rebel groups were therefore unwilling to participate in peace negotiations, while others ended up deciding to fight against those who were willing to participate and sign agreements with the Sudanese government. This point was exemplified by Abd al-Wahid, the leader of the SLM/A in 2009 when he said, “why should I accept the peace offerings of Khartoum when the American people are behind me, and we can get a better deal, like our southern brothers in their [Comprehensive Peace Agreement] at Naivasha?”[xxxviii]
For Wahid and the SLM/A, sustaining violence was beneficial not only because it might make their negotiating position with Khartoum more favourable as international pressure against the government mounted with time, but also because of the immediate economic advantages to be gained during conflict. David Keen explains that violence and chaos in intrastate war like the one in Darfur, is frequently used to serve short-term economic gains.[xxxix] In this sense, conflict serves as an alternative system for profit-making because rebel groups can pillage almost at will, taking anything that might be of use to them. This was the case in Sierra Leone in the late 20th Century when rebels were able to access key economic resources like diamonds either through simple theft or by occupying the extraction mines.[xl] In this case the rebels preferred violence to peace because it brought them immediate rewards that might be either difficult or impossible to achieve by any other means. This same logic can also likely be applied to the situation in Darfur as there is hardly a single news report that does not mention some form of looting. Basically, it seems as though the rebels would have been able to finance their operations by stealing. This in turn meant that they were able to sustain violence for longer periods of time, worsening the state of the region and the lives of citizens, yet improving their position in relation to Khartoum. The longer the rebels could maintain their violent campaign, the more the pressure from the international community would mount. Therefore, the rebels were in an advantageous position because both their short-term and long-term goals coincided.
Concluding Darfur
The conflict in Darfur, although it has been extensively covered, has been consistently described with one narrative. As this paper has explained, the majority of media reports have depicted a horrific scenario of state sponsored violence that has terrorized the people of the Darfur region. This account has often borrowed the storyline of ethnic cleavages from the Second Sudanese civil war, projecting the government as an Arab group using a ruthless proxy force to carry out systematic violence against black African subordinates. With this message of ethnic cleansing being constantly portrayed, genocide became the central component of the international jargon surrounding the conflict in Darfur. Senior US officials took the unprecedented step to claim the ongoing conflict a genocide, and genocide was also a central part of the rhetoric that came from the Save Darfur Coalition. Genocide has also encompassed a substantial portion of academic research, as it is given significant attention in the majority of scholarly articles that focus on the conflict in Darfur.
While talk of genocide has put a spotlight on the crisis, it has not accurately illustrated the realities of this intrastate conflict. First of all, the conflict in Darfur arose when rebel forces, seeing an opportunity with the rest of the country focused on peace negotiations between Khartoum and the south, decided to initiate attacks. It was only after this, that the government elicited the Janjaweed in order to serve as a counterinsurgency force. Secondly, although the Janjaweed certainly were guilty of crimes against humanity once they became involved in the conflict, violence after the first few years can actually be attributed to rebel groups that fractured and ended up fighting each other. However, rather than adapt the narrative to fit the evolving realities of the conflict, the international community continued to lobby for a stronger intervention force while reiterating claims of genocide that labelled the government as villains and the rebels as victims. This misrepresentation allowed rebel forces to continue violence for a number of years as it served both their short and long term interests, without facing the same scrutiny that pressured the Sudanese government. Therefore, the inability of the international community to accurately understand the conflict in Darfur turned out to be one of the most decisive factors in the prolongation of violence.
The crisis in Darfur serves as a case study for the importance of accurate information in international affairs, and it shows just how severe the consequences can be when false beliefs develop into perceived fact. Such situations need to have people on the ground who are unbiased and committed to revealing the truth as there are a number of questions that still need to be answered. For example, what role did the African Union play in this conflict? Most reports simply state that the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) who had a presence in the region beginning in 2004, did not have the political capacity nor the military force to have a substantial impact and curb the violence.[xli] However, the fact that they were there on the ground in Darfur should have meant that at the very least, they could provide an accurate description of the violence that was occurring. Considering the misrepresentation that we have already seen, it is not unreasonable to question whether the AMIS force were a party to some of the crimes against humanity that were reported. The gross inaccuracies regarding the conflict in Darfur should lead to questions like these so that in future conflicts, perhaps the international community will approach violence with a more sceptical view.
[i] Alex de Waal, “Sudan: The Turbulent State,” in War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, ed. Alex de Waal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 4.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid., 8.
[iv] Scott Strauss, “Darfur and the Genocide Debate,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 1 (2005): 123.
[v] De Waal, “Sudan: The Turbulent State.”
[vi] Paul Coller, “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy,” inLeashing the Dogs of War ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall. (Washington: US Institute of Peace Press).
[vii] Ibid., 3.
[viii] Andrea Behrends, “Fighting for oil when there is no oil yet: The Darfur-Chad border,”Focaal, no. 52 (2008): 51.
[ix] Zeynep Taydas, Dursun Peksen, and Patrick James, “Why do Civil Wars Occur? Understanding the Importance of Institutional Quality,” Civil Wars 12, no. 3 (2010): 199.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Peter Bechtold, “Darfur, the ICC and American Politics,” Middle East Policy 16, no. 2 (2009): 150-1.
[xii] Ibid., 151.
[xiii] Ibid., 154.
[xiv] Ibid., 155.
[xv] Marc Gustafson, “Rethinking Darfur,” Cato Institute: Foreign Policy Briefing, no. 89 (2010): 5, www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11862.
[xvi] Bechtold, “Darfur, the ICC and American Politics,” 155.
[xvii] Alex de Waal, “Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect,” International Affairs 83, no. 6 (2007): 1040.
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] Bechtold, “Darfur, the ICC and American Politics,” 155.
[xx] Cited in Colum Lynch, “Monitor Blames Sudan for Darfur Militia Killings,” The Washington Post, August 7, 2004, accessed February 1, 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46656-2004Aug6?language=printer.
[xxi] Nicolas Kristof, “Ethnic Cleansing, Again,” The New York Times, March 24, 2004, accessed February 1, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/opinion/ethnic-cleansing-again.html.
[xxii] Deborah Murphy, “Narrating Darfur: Darfur in the U.S. Press, March-September 2004,” in War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, ed. Alex de Waal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 315.
[xxiii] Cited in William A. Schabas, “Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, The United Nations,” 2008, accessed February 4, 2012, http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/pdf/ha/cppcg/cppcg_e.pdf.
[xxiv] Cited in Rebecca Hamilton, “Inside Colin Powell’s Decision to Declare Genocide in Darfur,” The Atlantic, August 17, 2011, accessed January 30, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/08/inside-colin-powells-decision-to-declare-genocide-in-darfur/243560/
[xxv] Strauss, “Darfur and the Genocide Debate,” 123.
[xxvi] Ibid.
[xxvii] Alex Bellamy, “Responsibility to Protect of Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq,” Ethics & International Affairs 19, no. 2 (2005): 31, 38.
[xxviii] Mahmood Mamdani, “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency,”London Review of Books 29, no. 5 (2007), accessed January 23, 2012, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mahmood-mamdani/the-politics-of-naming-genocide-civil-war-insurgency
[xxix] Gustafson, “Rethinking Darfur,” 2.
[xxx] Rebecca Hamilton and Chad Hazlett, “Not on Our Watch: The Emergence of the American Movement for Darfur,” in War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, ed. Alex de Waal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
[xxxi] Ibid., 344.
[xxxii] Gustafson, “Rethinking Darfur.”
[xxxiii] Becthold, “Darfur, the ICC and American Politics.”
[xxxiv] Ibid., 157.
[xxxv] Gustafson, “Rethinking Darfur,” 5.
[xxxvi] Ibid., 1.
[xxxvii] Bechtold, “Darfur, the ICC and American Politics,” 161.
[xxxviii] Ibid., 155.
[xxxix] David Keen, “The Economic Function of Violence in Civil Wars,” The Adelphi Papers 38, no. 320 (1998).
[xl] Mats Berdal and David Keen, “Violence and Economic Agendas in Civil Wars: Some Policy Implications,” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 26, no. 3 (1997): 801.
[xli] De Waal, “Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect,” 1041.
References
Bechtold, Peter. “Darfur, the ICC and American Politics.” Middle East Policy 16, no. 2 (2009): 149-163.
Behrends, Andrea. “Fighting for oil when there is no oil yet: The Darfur-Chad border.”Focaal, no. 52 (2008): 39-56.
Bellamy, Alex. “Responsibility to Protect of Trojan Horse? The Crisis in Darfur and Humanitarian Intervention after Iraq.” Ethics & International Affairs 19, no. 2 (2005): 31-54.
Berdal, Mats and Keen, David. “Violence and Economic Agendas in Civil Wars: Some Policy Implications.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 26, no. 3 (1997): 795-818.
Collier, Paul. “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy.” In Leashing the Dogs of War, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, 197-217. Washington: US Institute of Peace Press, 2008.
De Waal, Alex. “Darfur and the Failure of the Responsibility to Protect.” International Affairs 83, no. 6 (2007): 1039-1054.
De Waal, Alex. “Sudan: The Turbulent State.” In War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, edited by Alex de Waal, 1-38. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Gustafson, Marc. “Rethinking Darfur.” Cato Institute: Foreign Policy Briefing 89 (2010): 1-12. Accessed January 26, 2012. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_ id=11862.
Hamilton, Rebecca. “Inside Colin Powell’s Decision to Declare Genocide in Darfur.” The Atlantic, August 17, 2011. Accessed January 30, 2012. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/08/inside-colin-powells-decision-to-declare-genocide-in-darfur/243560/.
Hamilton, Rebecca and Hazlett, Chad. “Not on Our Watch: The Emergence of the American Movement for Darfur.” In War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, edited by Alex de Waal, 337-366. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Keen, David. “The Economic Function of Violence in Civil Wars.” The Adelphi Papers 38, no. 320 (1998): 1-74.
Kristof, Nicolas. “Ethnic Cleansing, Again.” The New York Times, March 24, 2004. Accessed February 1, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/opinion/ethnic- cleansing-again.html.
Lynch, Colum. 2004, “Monitor Blames Sudan for Darfur Militia Killings.” The Washington Post, August 7, 2004. Accessed February 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46656-2004Aug6?languag e=printer.
Mamdani, Mahmood. “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” London Review of Books 29, no. 5 (2007). Accessed January 23, 2012. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mahmood-mamdani/the-politics-of-naming-genocide-civil-war-insurgency.
Murphy, Deborah. “Narrating Darfur: Darfur in the U.S. Press, March-September 2004.” In War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, edited by Alex de Waal, 314-336. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Schabas, William A. Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, The United Nations. 2008. Accessed February 4, 2012. http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/pdf/ha/cppcg/cppcg_e.pdf.
Straus, Scott. “Darfur and the Genocide Debate.” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 1 (2005): 123-133.
Taydas, Zeynep, Peksen, Dursun, and James, Patrick. “Why Do Civil Wars Occur? Understanding the Importance of Institutional Quality.” Civil Wars 12, no. 3 (2010): 195-217.
About Andrew Harmes
As a student in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Dalhousie University in Canada, Andrew Harmes is entering his fourth year of a double major in Political Science and Canadian Studies. Andrew has contributed articles to the Dalhousie Undergraduate Political Science Society’s journal, The Podium, as well as Federalism-E, Canada’s Undergraduate Federalism Journal. Upon graduation, Andrew looks to pursue a combined Bachelor of Laws and Master of Public Administration degree. His paper 'Prolongation of Violence and the Realities of Darfur' was originally written for Professor Donald Bowser’s class on global conflict and violence.
