English abstract
The conflict erupted in Darfur in 2003 when two domestic rebel groups launched an attack
against National Islamic Front in Darfur. The two opposing groups representing in Sudan
were the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement . About 400
thousand people have died in the conflict, and a further 2 to 3 million have become
refugees or internally displaced persons because of the warfare. The political history of
Sudan is a history of uprisings and civil wars, superimposed on each other and rooted deep
into the legacy of the colonial rule policies. The British administration entrenched the
rhetoric of race and politicised racial identification in Sudan. It manipulated tribalism and
imposed a political hierarchy between the tribes of Darfur. The British rule transformed
"the Arab and the Africans from flexible cultural identities to rigid political identities". It
intended to separate Arab from non-Arab and establish order. The British administration
followed the policy of economic inequality between the central Sudan Arabs and peripheral
Sudan. It concentrated the development and economic activities in one part of the country,
the northern part but neglected the peripheral part notably the south and Darfur. The
northern region enjoyed a privileged status as they were given access to education and
power, while the colonial administration introduced Closed Districts Ordinance for Darfur
and South. After independence and in the mid-eighties particularly, Darfur suffered from
severe drought, causing a conflict between the Arab pastoralists and the African
agriculturalist groups. Due to the deteriorating economic situation, the government could
do nothing to help them. The economy of Sudan deteriorated due to the legacy of British
colonialism notably the problem in the south, the government's rigid foreign policy, weak
state institutions and economic embargo. All these factors depleted the state's financial
resources and deprived the state, especially the periphery from development. The conflict
system was facilitated by many factors such as power vacuums in hinterlands, the presence
of trans-border ethnic groups because of colonialisms' arbitrary division, the flow of
weapons through Chad wars and Chad-Libya war and external intervention.
