At least 18 people have been killed and dozens injured in renewed violence in the past 24 hours in West Darfur, Sudan, according to a local activist and aid worker.
Sharaf Jumma Salah, a West Darfur resident and activist, said Friday that tribal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs left at least 46 people injured, and that dozens of houses in four villages had been burnt down in the area of Jebel Moon.
Fighting earlier this week also killed at least 16, in the same area.
Adam Regal, spokesman for the General Coordination Body for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, said on Thursday that the violence started that morning and went on for hours. He said a communications cut had made it difficult to obtain complete information from the remote area.
Regal blamed local Arab tribal militias known as janjaweed for the attack.
Clashes in Jebel Moon erupted in mid-November over a land dispute between Arab and non-Arab tribes. Dozens have been killed since then and authorities have deployed more troops to the area. Sporadic fighting has continued, however.
Sudan has seen unrest following an October military coup that rattled an already fragile democratic transition. The African country has also faced uphill security and economic challenges since the 2019 overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar Al-Bashir and his Islamist government.
In Khartoum, the country’s capital, protests against the military coup continue. Two teenagers were killed by gunfire in demonstrations on Thursday, according to the Sudan Doctors Committee. The group, which has kept track of protester deaths and injuries since the coup, has tallied a total of 87 killed.
The instability has led to deteriorating security conditions in other parts of the country, like the war-wrecked region of Darfur.
The yearslong Darfur conflict broke out when rebels from the territory’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
Al-Bashir’s government responded with a campaign of aerial bombings and raids by the janjaweed, a militia that has been accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes in Darfur over the years.
Al-Bashir, who has been in prison in Khartoum since his ouster, also faces international charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the Darfur conflict.
The “Darfur Genocide” refers to the current mass slaughter and rape of Darfuri men, women, and children in Western Sudan. The killings began in 2003 and became the first genocide in the 21st century. Unrest and violence persist today.
The genocide is being carried out by a group of government-armed and government-funded Arab militias known as the Janjaweed (which loosely translates to ‘devils on horseback’) or Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The Janjaweed systematically destroy Darfuris by burning villages, looting economic resources, polluting water sources, and murdering, raping, and torturing civilians. These militias are historic rivals of the main rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM), and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). As of spring 2020, over 480,000 people have been killed and more than 2.8 million people are displaced.
Following independence from Britain in 1956, Sudan became embroiled in two prolonged civil wars for most of the remainder of the 20th century. These conflicts were rooted in the north’s domination of the economic, political, and social institutions of largely non-Muslim, non-Arab, southern Sudanese.The first civil war ended in 1972 but broke out again in 1983. The second war and famine-related effects resulted in more than 4 million people being displaced and, according to rebel estimates, more than 2 million deaths occurred over a period of two decades. As the civil war between the North and the South reached its peak in the 1990’s, the government ignored reports of rising violence in Darfur.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the North-South War in 2005, granting additional political power to South Sudan. However, it failed to take into account the effects of the war on Darfur. Darfur remained underdeveloped and marginalized at the federal level, lacking infrastructure and development assistance. This neglect, combined with allegations that the government was arming Arab tribesmen (Janjaweed) to raid non-Arab villages, was used as the justification for a rebel attack on a Sudanese Air Force Base at El Fasher, North Darfur in 2003. This attack sparked government reprisals on residents of Darfur, contributing to the large-scale human rights atrocities facing Darfuri civilians today.