War in Darfur

Overview

The War in Darfur was an armed conflict in western Sudan that began in 2003. Rebel groups challenged the central government of Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum, accusing it of neglect and discrimination. Sudan’s government fought the Sudan Liberation Movement, also known as the Sudan Liberation Army, and the Justice and Equality Movement. It armed and unleashed the Janjaweed, whose campaign against communities associated with the rebellion became central to the war. The fighting and its consequences killed approximately 300,000 people and displaced more than 2 million. The war continued until 2020; the renewed Sudanese civil war that began in 2023 was a later conflict.^[1]

Sudanese forces and the government-backed Janjaweed conducted a scorched-earth offensive against civilians. Their campaign included killings, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, pillaging, destruction of villages and forced displacement. It particularly targeted the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit, three non-Arab communities in Darfur. Khartoum used attacks on civilians to destroy support for largely non-Arab rebel forces. Government responsibility was direct: it supplied and deployed the Janjaweed, maintained links with militia commanders and failed to fulfill its commitment to disarm them. The Janjaweed and Sudanese government bear responsibility for genocide in Darfur.^[2][3][4]

Darfur’s communities did not divide into uniform opposing camps. Some Darfurian Arabs fought alongside rebels, and many opposed Janjaweed tactics; some non-Arabs supported the government. The rebellion grew from exclusion, dictatorship and Khartoum’s pursuit of power, while the government’s response singled out particular ethnic communities for destruction. This distinction matters to the history of both the insurgency and the atrocities: neither an ethnic label nor participation in the wider war made civilians legitimate targets.^[3][5]

Background

Al-Bashir’s government held power in Sudan from 1989 and had roots in Political Islam. Darfur’s rebels accused the central government of systematic neglect and maladministration. In February 2003, the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement rose against Khartoum. On February 26, insurgents attacked Sudanese army garrisons in western Darfur and destroyed military aircraft at al-Fashir. The Justice and Equality Movement also had roots in Political Islam, although it fought al-Bashir’s government. Their uprising opened a new war while negotiations to end Sudan’s separate, long-running southern civil war were approaching completion.^[1][3][5]

Khartoum responded by arming and unleashing Janjaweed militiamen against the insurgents and people identified as their supporters. Government forces and militia fighters operated in the same counterinsurgency. Janjaweed attacks killed, pillaged and raped civilians, destroyed homes and property, and drove families from villages. An early assessment put the number left homeless by militia attacks at approximately one million. Sudan’s government promised under a 2006 Darfur agreement to disarm the Janjaweed and punish ceasefire violators, but did not carry out its disarmament commitment. The militia therefore remained a government-backed instrument of violence after its abuses had drawn international attention.^[3][4][6]

The scale of the humanitarian emergency became apparent early in the war. In June 2004, Khartoum blocked United Nations access to Darfur amid a worsening crisis. United States Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Khartoum that month before traveling to Darfur. On June 24, U.S. Agency for International Development director Andrew Natsios estimated that Janjaweed forces had killed between 10,000 and 30,000 people. Those early figures preceded years of further deaths and displacement; an account of the conflict later estimated approximately 300,000 killed and more than 2 million displaced. Estimates produced at different times and with different scopes also put deaths at 200,000 or, for the 2003–2008 offensive, 400,000, and displacement above three million.^{[1][3][5][6][7]}

Course of the war

The first phase combined rebel attacks on state positions with a government campaign against communities thought to sustain the rebellion. Sudan’s army and the Janjaweed attacked villages, killed residents and destroyed the means of civilian life. Torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence and forced movement formed part of the scorched-earth offensive. The Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit were singled out. Janjaweed attacks on people identified as insurgent supporters spread fear beyond active combat zones and left displaced civilians dependent on protection and relief that Khartoum obstructed. Repeated United Nations Human Rights Council reporting did not stop killings, mass rape or ethnic cleansing.^[3][4][6][8]

International efforts to restrain the campaign developed alongside attempts to negotiate peace. African Union personnel deployed to Darfur, but their mission remained fragile. A May 2006 peace agreement signed in Abuja by Sudan’s government and some insurgents failed to bring all major rebel factions into a settlement. Discussion then turned to replacing the 7,000-person African Union mission with a more robust United Nations peacekeeping force. Al-Bashir refused that deployment. Arab League secretary-general Amr Musa urged Sudan in June 2006 to accept UN peacekeepers, but the Arab League committee on Sudan backed al-Bashir’s refusal on August 20. Qatar, then the only Arab member of the UN Security Council, was the proposal’s only open critic there.^[3][9]

United States President George W. Bush responded to the August decision by sending Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Fraser to Khartoum. She carried a personal letter urging al-Bashir to permit a robust UN force in Darfur. The Arab League’s August position reversed its secretary-general’s June appeal and supported Sudan’s resistance to a stronger international presence. Its stance had practical significance while civilians faced continuing attacks and the African Union mission lacked the strength sought by advocates of UN deployment.^[9][10]

The war also drew support and intervention across Sudan’s borders. Chad and Sudan backed rebel groups on opposite sides of their shared frontier. In 2006, Chadian President Idriss Deby cut diplomatic relations with Khartoum after a deadly rebel attack on Chad’s capital. Chad-supported Darfur rebels struck Sudan’s capital in May 2008, demonstrating that the conflict could reach the seat of al-Bashir’s government as well as border communities. Qatar mediated an agreement to normalize Chad–Sudan relations in 2009, but violence continued. A second agreement followed in January 2010, and Deby visited Sudan in February for the first time in six years.^[1]

Foreign supplies also affected the government’s capacity to wage war. China supplied small arms to Sudan and Sudanese armed groups during the War in Darfur despite a UN arms embargo. China’s extensive economic relationship with al-Bashir’s government included a major stake in Sudanese oil projects. The Save Darfur Coalition exposed concealed Chinese deals with the regime, prompting international protests against China’s support. Arms transfers and economic ties formed part of the international setting in which Khartoum sustained its military response while seeking to resist external pressure over civilian protection.^[2]

Qatar pursued a separate series of negotiations inside Darfur. In 2009, it brokered a confidence-building agreement between Sudan’s government and the Justice and Equality Movement. Doha then mediated a framework peace accord in 2010. These steps led to the 2011 Doha Document for Peace in Darfur, signed by al-Bashir’s government and the Liberation and Justice Movement. The Justice and Equality Movement did not sign. Further agreements based on the document followed between Khartoum and the Justice and Equality Movement in 2012 and between Khartoum and a splinter group in 2013. None ended the war, which continued until 2020.^[1]

These negotiations took place amid continuing disagreement over the original atrocities and responsibility for them. A promise to disarm the Janjaweed had not been fulfilled, while the exclusion of a major rebel movement from the 2011 document limited that settlement. Agreements with one faction, or with a later splinter group, did not amount to a comprehensive end to fighting. Qatar’s mediation produced successive texts and openings for talks, but its diplomatic activity and the endurance of the conflict must be understood together.^[1][3]

Outcome

No single agreement ended the War in Darfur. The 2006 Abuja agreement failed to settle the wider rebellion, and the 2011 Doha Document did not include the Justice and Equality Movement. Subsequent agreements in 2012 and 2013 showed that negotiations remained necessary after the Doha signing. Approximately 300,000 people were killed and more than 2 million displaced during the war. The scale of the loss reflected both combat and the deliberate assault on civilian communities that sustained the government’s counterinsurgency. Fighting continued until 2020, despite years of regional mediation, international pressure and peace documents.^[1][3][5]

International criminal proceedings placed al-Bashir’s conduct at the center of efforts to assign responsibility. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in 2009 with five counts of crimes against humanity—murder, extermination, forced transfer, torture and rape—and two war-crimes counts, attacks on civilians and pillaging. A second warrant, issued on July 12, 2010, charged three counts of genocide concerning the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit. Those counts addressed killing, serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberate imposition of conditions of life calculated to destroy each group. The second warrant did not revoke the first.^[3][4][11]

Regional diplomacy did not consistently reinforce accountability. In March 2009, weeks after the first International Criminal Court warrant, the Arab League welcomed al-Bashir to its summit in Qatar and rejected the court’s jurisdiction over him. The reception showed how member governments’ political choices shaped the League’s response to a ruler accused of mass atrocities. It followed the League committee’s 2006 support for al-Bashir’s refusal of UN peacekeepers, even though its secretary-general had earlier called for their admission.^[9][11]

Aftermath and legacy

Darfur’s legacy extends beyond the formal duration of the war. Destruction of villages, displacement and the targeted killing of civilians left deep consequences for communities across the region. The record of Sudan’s army and its state-sponsored Janjaweed also made government responsibility inseparable from assessment of the campaign. Officials serving as liaisons between Khartoum and the militia were identified in sanctions measures, reinforcing the connection between state policy and militia operations. International reporting and sanctions documented abuses, but neither ended the violence during the war.^[4][8][12]

Al-Bashir’s rule ended in 2019, before the Darfur war’s stated endpoint in 2020. His removal did not erase the history of atrocities or settle the issue of accountability represented by the International Criminal Court warrants. The Rapid Support Forces emerged from the Janjaweed milieu, and their role in Darfur remained relevant as their commander, Hemedti, gained political standing and diplomatic access. Foreign engagement with him did not erase the force’s involvement in genocide or the danger posed by its brutality.^[1][13][14]

A renewed civil war erupted in Sudan in 2023, after the War in Darfur had continued until 2020. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces belonged to that later nationwide conflict, although Darfur again suffered grave violence. The distinction between the two wars preserves their chronology while recognizing the continuity of armed actors and the unresolved consequences of al-Bashir’s rule. In Darfur, the earlier war remains a record of rebellion against central exclusion, government-backed genocide, failed protection of civilians and peace agreements that fell short of ending the conflict.^[1][14][15]