Stop Genocide

Darfur: To the Victor Go the Spoils

by Michelle

categories: Darfur & Sudan, Refugees And Idps

Published November 17, 2009 @ 04:57AM PT

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Is the genocide in Darfur complete?

Michael Gerson's provocative op-ed in the Washington Post last week argues that Khartoum has essentially achieved its "policy aims" in Darfur by "targeting disfavored ethnic groups, destroying their way of life and forcing millions into camps," and is set to seal the deal with a newly-announced plan to close camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur early next year. The troubling report comes despite the fact that numerous international observers, including the African Union's own panel on Darfur, recognize that the security situation remains too volatile to allow for safe returns, and that issues of land and property must be carefully dealt with in order to facilitate peaceful repatriation.

But Khartoum is clearly concerned with none of this. As Darfur expert Bec Hamilton wrote, the desire to close down the IDP camps goes hand-in-hand with President Omar al-Bashir's National Congress Party's (NCP) hell-bent desire to "legitimately" win next year's presidential elections.

But IDP issue goes beyond the NCP's plan to, as Enough blogger Amanda Hsiao aptly puts it, "sweep the IDP problem under the rug in time for elections." Getting back to Gerson's point, permanently (and forcibly) resettling 2.7 million Darfuri IDPs to a location of the government's choosing could very well be a last grand stand in the effort to eliminate the influence, if not fully the existence, of groups presenting a threat to the NCP's rule.

Forced resettlement -- rather than voluntary return -- cements the process of land dispossession that began in 2003 when Darfuris were violently driven from their homes, and manipulating the location of the resettlement allows for further dispossession of any political significance. Even though the physical destruction of the Fur, Massaleit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups is far from complete -- though keep in mind, the legal definition of genocide specifies destruction "in whole or in part" -- they were successfully driven from their land and now stand to be even further politically marginalized.

This is, by the way, not the first time Darfur has been politically manipulated, though the actual moving of populations is a bit more extreme: In 1994, the government redrew the administrative boundaries of Darfur, splitting the previously consolidated Fur stronghold into the three states of North, South, and West Darfur. According to the ICG report Darfur Rising, "The new administrative units were mostly created at the expense of black African groups, further alienating them from the government, and stimulating conflicts." In the US, we know this practice as "gerrymandering."

The genocide may not be complete, but if Khartoum has its way, it may have been just successful enough to consolidate its brutal hold on power in Darfur.

[UN Photo/Olivier Chassot : Water Distribution by UNAMID in Tora Northern Darfur. 26 July 2009.]