History of Darfur
The influence of regional geopolitics and war by proxy, coupled with economic hardship and environmental degradation, from soon after independence led to sporadic armed resistance from the mid-1980s.
Documentary history is also rather sparse, Muhammad al-Idrisi, writing in 1154 is the first author to offer information about the region that provides any concrete detail.
[1] Oral traditions record a race of white giants called Tora, who allegedly reached Darfur from the north, perhaps indicating a Berber origin.
His great-grandson, the sultan Dali, a celebrated figure in Darfur histories, was on his mother's side a Fur, and thus brought the dynasty closer to the people it ruled.
Soleiman's grandson, Ahmad Bakr (c. 1682 – c. 1722), made Islam the religion of the state, and increased the prosperity of the country by encouraging immigration from Bornu and Bagirmi.
[citation needed] In 1856, a Khartoum businessman, Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, began operations in the land south of Darfur and set up a network of trading posts defended by well-armed forces and soon had a sprawling state under his rule.
This area known as the Bahr el Ghazal had long been the source of the goods that Darfur would trade to Egypt and North Africa, especially slaves and ivory.
The natives of Bahr el Ghazal paid tribute to Darfur, and these were the chief articles of merchandise sold by the Darfurians to the Egyptian traders along the Darb el-Arbaʿīn road to Asyut.
Ibrahim was slain in battle in the autumn of 1874, and his uncle Hassab Alla, who sought to maintain the independence of his country, was captured in 1875 by the troops of the khedive, and removed to Cairo with his family.
Slatin defended the province against the forces of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad, who were led by a Rizeigat Sheikh named Madibbo, but surrendered in 1883 and Darfur was incorporated into the Mahdist State.
Abdallahi forced warriors of the Western tribes to move to the capital Omdurman and fight for him, sparking rebellions by the Rizeigat and Kababish nomads.
Under Ali Dinar – who during the Mahdi's era had been kept as a prisoner in Omdurman – Darfur enjoyed a period of peace and a de facto return to independence.
[6] Within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the bulk of resources were devoted toward Khartoum and Blue Nile Province, leaving the rest of the country relatively undeveloped.
The fracturing of the Umma led to the first political demagoguery attempting to split the "Africans" from the "Arabs" in the 1968 elections, a difficult task as they were substantially intermarried and could not be distinguished by skin tone.
Sadiq al-Mahdi, calculating that the Fur and other "African" tribes formed a majority of the electorate, allied with the DDF in blaming "the Arabs" for Darfur's neglect.
This left Sadiq's opponent, his uncle Imam Al-Hadi al-Mahdi, courting the Baggara using the rhetoric of "Arabism" to offer hope of somehow being a part of the wealthy center.
Sadiq al-Mahdi allowed FROLINAT – a guerilla movement trying to overthrow President of Chad François Tombalbaye – to establish bases in Darfur in 1969.
Obsessed with the vision of creating a band of Sahelian nations that were both Muslim and culturally Arab, Gaddafi made an offer to Nimeiry to merge their two countries in 1971.
Nimeiry, concerned by the warm welcome Gaddafi had given to al-Mahdi, his exiled opposition, began to encourage the fragile administration of Félix Malloum, the new Chadian president after Tombalbaye's 1975 assassination.
The appointment of a Nile Valley awlad al-beled, chosen to oversee the support to Habré, sparked riots by Darfuri across Sudan in which three students were killed.
A scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center noted, "The challenge is to avoid over-simplistic or deterministic formulations that equate climate change inexorably with genocide or terrorism, as some less careful commentators have done.
[18] Sadiq al-Mahdi came out of exile, making a deal with Gaddafi – which he had no intention of honoring – that he would turn over Darfur to Libya if he was supplied with the funds to win the upcoming elections.
The herders, faced with watching their animals die of starvation in the desiccated landscape, tried to force the routes south open, attacking farmers who tried to block their path.
[21] In December 1991, a Sudan People's Liberation Army force that included Darfuri Daud Bolad entered Darfur in the hopes of spreading the southern rebellion to the West.
The division was the idea of Ali al Haj, Minister of Federal Affairs, who hoped that by dividing the Fur so they did not form a majority in any state that it would allow Islamist candidates to be elected.
[25] In 2000, a clandestine group consisting mostly of Darfuris published the Black Book, a dissident manuscript detailing the domination of the north and the impoverishment of the other regions.
The government-supported Janjaweed were accused of committing major human rights violations, including mass killing, looting, and systematic rape of the non-Arab population of Darfur.
