The Perils of Pro-Government Militias in African Transition Democracy: Case of RSF in the Sudan’s Conflict

AT THE TIME OF WRITING,1 hopes were high that a peace agreement would be signed between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), bringing an end to a war in southern Sudan that has lasted on and off since independence in 1956. At the same time, there were worrying signs of growing conflict in the Darfur region in the west of the country, pitting forces based among the local Muslim peoples against pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed. The growth of this new conflict indicates that Sudan's civil war was never entirely a north-south or a Muslim-Christian struggle, but that it is a country-wide conflict that even incorporates other Muslim populations. The two main anti-government groupings in the Greater Darfur region are the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A). The Janjaweed militias are said to be largely of Chadian origin and finance themselves through plunder and pillage, reportedly enjoying implicit support from the government in Khartoum. The conflict has already left thousands of Darfurians killed, with an estimated 600,000 internally displaced and some 110,000 crossing as refugees into neighbouring Chad. As the government has denied access to most of the relief agencies operating in the country, the Darfur region is in effect sealed off from the outside world, leaving displaced people with little chance of receiving food aid and medical supplies. Despite its geographical remoteness, by late 2003 the crisis in Darfur gradually came to international attention. The grave deterioration of the situation during recent months has led Western supporters of the ongoing IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) negotiations between the government of Sudan and the SPLM/A to acknowledge the seriousness of the escalating violence in Darfur. As the crisis is throwing a shadow over the peace talks in Naivasha in Kenya, the international community is expected to respond to the fighting. The insurrection in Darfur is gaining rapidly in coherence. In the light of the SPLM/A's bilateral talks with the government, several opposition movements are afraid that, once part of the transitional government, the

The recent political violence in the western region of Darfur demonstrates the complexity of the Sudan’s tragedy. While the GOS and the SPLA/M are negotiating to end the longest running civil war in the South, a new civil war erupted in the region of Darfur. There are signs that the GOS and the SPLA/M are searching for a comprehensive peace agreement to end the longest running civil war in the south. Supported by the United States of America and other African and Western countries, the peace negotiations between the GOS and the SPLA/M, however, have focused on outstanding north-south conflicts over identity, power and wealth sharing, and the future of the three contested regions of the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan. But the north-south conflict is only one of the many regional conflicts that have devastated Sudan. Furthermore, political parties within and outside the NDA have contested the SPLA/M and the Sudan government’s monopoly of peace negotiations, labeling them as nondemocratic in their handling of issues pertinent to the future of the whole country.KeywordsPolitical ViolencePeace ProcessPeace NegotiationRebel GroupIndirect RuleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Does the military strength of rebel movements affect conflict-related sexual violence by pro-government militias (PGMs)? Existing studies on PGMs show the significant role that PGMs can have in shaping conflict dynamics and outcomes. What remains understudied is how the variation in power capabilities between conflict actors and the sources of support for PGMs influences civilian victimization by militia groups. We argue that strong rebels tip the balance of power against the state, making the state more susceptible to authorizing or allowing sexual violence by PGMs. In addition, the level of autonomy of PGMs from the government is likely to influence their sexual violence, conditional on rebel strength. When rebels are militarily strong, states are likely to order or tolerate sexual violence by PGMs that they train and/or provide resources to, thereby resulting in sexual violence by state-dependent PGMs. Examining all civil conflicts from 1989 to 2009 and using newly collected data on state-dependence of PGMs, our empirical findings provide evidence that PGMs are associated with higher levels of conflict-related sexual violence when the government faces strong rebels. Results also show that the likelihood of sexual violence by state-dependent PGMs increases when rebels exhibit strong military capabilities.

Sudan saw no progress in its abysmal rights record in 2014. Instead, new episodes of conflict in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths and displaced; security forces repeatedly suppressed protesters demonstrating against government policies; and authorities continued to stifle civil society and independent media.The ruling National Congress Party and opposition parties, two of which signed an alliance in August, remained deadlocked over a national dialogue process that was to pave the way for elections and a new constitution. Sudan has yet to adopt a constitution after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement's six-year interim period ended in 2011 and South Sudan became independent.Fighting between government forces and rebel groups, and between other armed groups, often using government equipment and weapons, continues in several parts of Darfur. Conflict between the Rizeigat and Ma’aliya groups in South Darfur killed hundreds. More than 450,000 people have fled violence in Darfur since the beginning of 2014, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.Starting in February, the Rapid Support Forces, a Sudanese government force consisting largely of former militias, moved into Darfur from the Kordofan region, where they had been deployed to fight rebels in Southern Kordofan. The forces, led by the Darfuri former militia leader, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagolo (“Hemmeti”) carried out massive ground attacks on dozens of villages in South and North Darfur, targeting areas where they accused the population of sympathizing with rebels. They burned homes and shops, looted livestock, killed and robbed civilians, and forced tens of thousands of residents to flee to towns and camps for displaced people.

After gaining independence in 1956, Sudan underwent a troubled sociopolitical process that culminated in the separation of its southern part in 2011 as the new state of South Sudan. Sudan is, therefore, a living case of a false start, and a failed nation-building project. Consequently, it remains a highly contested and dysfunctional state with perpetual turbulence and an uncertain future. The false start of forcing national unity through coerced uniformity ossified nation-building, arrested national integration, and, therefore, impeded the realization of the Sudanese state formation as a viable political entity.1 The first and second civil wars of 1955–1972 and 1983–2005, the separation of South Sudan in 2011, and the current violent conflicts in Darfur, Southern Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains, and Blue Nile are proof of this.

This article aimed at finding out the relationship between the struggle for scarce resources by the different tribes and conflict in Darfur region. The study revealed that the struggle for scarce resources by the different tribes in Sudan contributed to the conflict in Darfur region. The study contends that resolution to the Darfur conflict should be proceeded by reconciliation between different tribes in the region. The root causes of the conflict should also be dealt with by way of promoting environmental rehabilitation and empowering the people to do things for themselves.

A growing line of research examines causes and consequences of militant group competition. However, empirical work on these topics has limitations. Most quantitative research uses relatively rough proxies for competition, such as counts of groups in a country. Other work uses dichotomous indicators, ignoring the intensity or degree of rivalries. Additionally, many studies examine either terrorist organizations or rebel groups, overlooking cross-type rivalry (e.g., terrorist vs. rebel). We address these issues by introducing time-varying dyadic rivalry data on hundreds of groups – rebels, terrorists, and pro-government militias – in Africa and Asia, 1990-2015. Rivalry levels include denouncements, threats, and violence. After presenting the data, we test the “outbidding” hypothesis: the notion that inter-organizational competition leads to more terrorism. This argument has found support in qualitative analyses, but quantitative tests using rivalry proxies show mixed results. Using our data we find support for the hypothesis. We conclude with research questions that could be addressed with the data.

Digging into Google Earth: An analysis of “Crisis in Darfur”

Although the existing literature on Pro-Government Militias (PGMs) is rife with studies on various aspects of government-militia relations, not much is known about specific approaches that governments employ to ensure loyalty of their semi-formal proxies. Lessons from recent civil war in Sudan and other cases of PGMs turning their arms against their former patrons further enhance the importance of understanding which mechanisms (if any) incumbents deploy to prevent militias from “going rogue.” In this study, we examine three mechanisms employed by governments to guarantee loyalty of their militia allies. We emphasize the importance of personal, sectarian and other ideological fractionalization within rebel groups; deployment of extreme violence by PGMs against co-ethnic civilians; and formation of rival militias as the most effective PGM loyalty assurance tools available to the incumbents. We test these theoretical assumptions on the case study of the Second Chechen War to elucidate how each of these mechanisms was implemented in practice during the decades-long counterinsurgency campaign waged by Moscow.

The Sudanese northern region of Darfur, in similarity with the rest of the country, has suffered a number of years of unrest but has been particularly insecure since February 2003 when the two main rebel groups of the region—the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M)—launched attacks on the government.1 The people of Darfur were reacting to what they perceived as the systematic and long-term discrimination by the central government against their region and with the advent of an agreement between the government and the south Sudanese to distribute resources and award greater autonomy to that region, that resentment kindled into conflict.2 The result was government-supported forces, including the infamous Janjaweed, responding to the rebel attacks with even greater brutality, indiscriminately targeting a civilian population they regarded as supporters of JEM and SLA/M. The scale of those affected is inevitably difficult to gauge given the insecurity that persists, which hampers accurate monitoring; but the UN estimated that between 2003 and 2007, in the region of Darfur alone, at least 200 000 individuals have died and a further two million have been displaced as a result of the ongoing conflict.3 Continuing international legal developments on the situation in Darfur, such as the deployment of a joint AU–UN peacekeeping force and the UN Security Council’s referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court, provided the focus for a symposium held at Oxford Brookes University in December 2008 and the following three articles are based upon presentations given. Zeray Yihdego and I, both of the Law Department, co-organized the symposium with support from the university’s Central Research Fund as well as our department. As the topic of the symposium suggested, our intention was for discussion on the situation in Darfur from a variety of international legal perspectives (primarily, international criminal, humanitarian and refugee laws), inviting both academic and practitioner speakers and audience members. The intention behind this approach was to avoid any tendency to consider the situation in Darfur in terms specific to the branches of public international law, and the complexity of situations such as the one taking place in Darfur itself invites and deserves a multifaceted analysis.

Who will deliver Darfur from evil?

This chapter interrogates the role of the African Union (AU) in the genocidal conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. The chapter begins by mapping out the roots of the conflict. A major one is the marginalization of the Darfur region in the economic and political spheres of the Sudan. In turn, with all legal-constitutional options for redress blocked, some Darfuris opted to organize various armed groups for the ostensible purpose of fighting the Sudanese government. With regard to the role of the AU, the chapter argues that the organization’s intervention has been ineffective in terms of ending the conflict. The chapter attributes this primarily to the fact that the organization is conflicted in light of the fact that some African governments are also visiting violence on their own people. The chapter then proffers some suggestions for helping to make the AU effective in helping to manage the conflict in Darfur, including the need for what it calls “robust peacemaking,” effective peacekeeping, the imperative of labeling the conflict a genocidal civil war, and the need to impose travel bans and the freezing of the assets of the perpetrators of genocidal acts.

In various countries throughout the world when rebel groups make an attack on innocent civilian and commit gross human rights violation, it is not punishable by the national courts. However, in 1998 a grounding breaking idea turned into reality, and 50 years of debate ended as the first International Criminal Court was established as a result of the Rome Statute. The Court entertains or investigates different crimes which are committed in its member’s sates across the world. However, the writers of this paper prefer the situation in Darfur; the case of Al Basher is selected as a context to discuss the role of the ICC Prosecutor. This is mainly preferred because Sudan has been the first situation referred by the Security Council since the ICC was established and the state concerned Sudan is not a party to the Rome Statute, therefore this situation has its particularities compared with others. In spite of this a lot of controversies and misconceptions are being witnessed on the understandings and implementation of international laws in Africa between ICC and African leaders. Basically, the controversy and misconception is not something emanates from the vacuum rather they are generated from various prevailing thoughts. African states accuse ICC as a neo colonialist institution targeting African leaders in addition to alleging ICC as playing double standard role in African and the rest of the world for instance ICC prosecution till now only in Africa in spite of Israel-Palestine and Afghanistan where the western countries have major interest from the conflict. Hence, the analysis of role the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor in Darfur Crisis, Sudan (the case of Omer Al-Bashir) is centered in line with main objective of the establishing Rome Statue in July 2002 which thrives that all member states of UN have to have the same standard in their respective territories.

While many cite the February 2003 outbreak of violence in the Darfur region of Sudan as the beginning of what a chorus of international actors are now calling genocide, the conflict in Darfur has quite complicated historical roots. This essay examines the regional, ideological, and historical factors that have helped form the modern Darfur states, focusing particularly on the rise of the Islamist movement in Khartoum. It asserts that understanding these factors is necessary to devise an effective international response to the current crisis in the Darfur region.

The Darfur crisis, dwell in the western territory of Sudan, a civil war that delineates upon the grave state of affairs. Since 2003, the Darfur region has been reported dislocated or migrated, providing the base argument to the world and the UN, referring genocide. Although establishing the insurgency distinctiveness, the crisis in the Darfur region has been generally referred to as tribal ethnic clashes between African inhabitants and Arab intruders. A justification that appears to be unsuccessful to elucidates the intricate situation belying the conflicting situation. This research aimed at two main contributing aspects – the politicoeconomic reasons for the crisis. Most significant, in investigating the conflict situation in Darfur with an approach that leads beyond the ethnic divide justification, it appears probable to discover issues, such as politico-economic reasons, imperative to address the issue in order to attain stability in Sudan.