Page 89 - History of War - Issue 18-15
P. 89
THE WAR IN DARFUR
desperate Arab cattle
Right: Most close air support for the
ground forces is done by helicopters like herders so they could
the Mi-24 Hind and cargo planes police the sedentary
African tribes. The
underlying purpose
was to eradicate any
chance that the ongoing
rebellion in the south, where
predominantly Christian and
animist Africans were fighting
against government control,
could spread among the stricken
Westerners in Darfur.
In the last years of Sadiq al-Mahdi’s
regime, violence came to Darfur as roving
Arab horsemen terrorised villages and stole
cattle. The ambiguous campaign appears to
have made an impression on the Sudanese
army’s officers. Prior to launching his coup
in 1989, then Brigadier al-Bashir employed
similar tactics against the restive southerners.
He augmented government forces with armed
horsemen, who made few demands on logistics
and fought on their own initiative. Here was a
fine example of modern cavalrymen in a low-
intensity conflict. Could its lessons be applied
on a larger scale?
The demons on horseback
The religious and quasi-religious have always
featured in Sudan’s history. In the Western
world, Sudan’s past conjures memories of the
Mahdi, the wandering Sufi mystic Muhammad
Ahmad ibn Abdallah who, in 1881, led a
rebellion against the British that climaxed with
the heroic demise of Major General Charles
‘Chinese’ Gordon.
But soldiers and fighting men shaped
Sudan’s history as well. As a nation cobbled
together from a disordered frontier, like Chile,
Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan, it took
the cruel fortitude of a conqueror to preserve
it. It was another Englishman, Lord Horatio
Herbert Kitchener, who wrested Sudan from
the fanatics and imposed the British-Egyptian
Condominium over its myriad people in 1898.
During the 1820s, the European-trained army
of Egypt’s Muhammad Ali Pasha subjugated
and then transformed the Sudan into a colonial
project. The Arab merchants and administrators
who took over this new possession established
Khartoum as a scenic trading hub for
commodities, cattle, and slaves.
Only dictators have ruled Sudan effectively;
the first was General Ibrahim Abboud, from
1958 to 1969. The second was Jaafar Nimeiri
from 1969 to 1985. Theirs was the mould that
al-Bashir simply filled with his own presence.
In 1999, weary of the Islamists who wanted
to impose a theocracy guided by Sharia law,
al-Bashir orchestrated the downfall of his old
ally Hassan al-Turabi, who was arrested. The
move triggered unforeseen consequences.
1989 1993 1999 2003
The Second Civil War ends with a Government forces launch an Hassan al-Turabi is dismissed This year sees the beginning of
peace treaty, but is terminated by Omar offensive in Nuba to depopulate from the National Assembly the Darfur crisis. The JEM and the
al-Bashir once he seizes power and it and remove the inhabitants. and later arrested. The Black Sudan Liberation Army launch
establishes the National Islamic Front, The death count is unknown. Book is published. Khalil attacks on government outposts.
later known as the National Congress Omar al-Bashir assumes the Ibrahim Muhammad organises The Janjaweed are mobilised as
Party. As de facto leader, al-Bashir leads presidency, a symbolic post the JEM rebel movement from Arab Darfuris are recruited and
the Revolutionary Command Council. propped up by the NIF. the Netherlands. given weapons.
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