Ethnic tension in Sudan

Sudanese Refugee Camp in Chad, May 2023 // Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Since April 2023, when the violent clashes began between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, the UN has reported that at least 13,000 people have been killed and another 33,000 injured. Repeated violations of basic human rights - including extrajudicial killings, torture, the use of mass graves and an alarmingly high number of gender-based violence cases against women and girls - have also been recorded. Extreme levels of violence are particularly evident in regions like West Darfur, where “non-Arabs” from the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa tribes have been targeted by the SAF and RSF as well as by “Arab” militias like the Janjaweed, the latter organisations both under the leadership of accused war criminal Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. For many of Sudan’s non-Arab peoples, such outbursts of extreme ethnic violence bear terrifying resemblance to the Sudanese government’s ethnic cleansing campaigns of the early 2000s. In order to understand this endemic cycle of ethnic violence, we must examine the origins of Sudan’s ethnic identities.

An oversimplified divide between a light skinned, Arabic-speaking elite in the North and “black” or non-Arab Africans in the South and West dominates race relations in Sudan. Such a binary ethnic division has its origins in Sudan’s history as a slave raiding, and later slave trading, state. Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, was founded as a marketplace for slaves in 1821, facilitating Arab slave traders from northern Sudan in abducting and enslaving predominantly non-Arab peoples from the South and the West. Through this process, social hierarchies were consolidated. The term “Arab” began to be associated with Islam and freedom, and therefore, high social status. The term “Sudanese” however, is derived from the Arabic word “sud”, meaning “black people” and consequently implied lower social status and even enslavement during the 19th century. Although Sudan’s racist, slave trading past is common knowledge, figures like the prominent slave traders Osman Digna and al-Zubair Pasha Rahma are still commemorated and glorified. For example, streets in Khartoum are named after them. 

Conquest also played a vital role in the establishment and reinforcement of the binary Arab and non-Arab ethnic division. For example, when the British held a monopoly on power in the region, their colonial policies favoured a narrow “Arab” elite. The introduction of a heavy handed, top-down Arabisation policy post-independence resulted in the racialisation of the Sudanese Arab identity, striving for Arab supremacy over the “zurga” (blue [dark-skinned] people) within regions like Darfur. Partially in response to this ever more violent, aggressive Arab identity, and also due to socio-economic discrimination, an Africanist ideology that stresses cultural and linguistic plurality has been fortified, increasing tensions between these two groups.

These conflicting identities have fuelled racism within Sudan where black or non-Arab Sudanese people are often referred to as “abid”, meaning slave, or “negros”. Such racism is prevalent across Sudanese society, even amongst local human rights campaigners like Ihsan Fagiri, the head of a women’s rights group called No To Women Oppression, who compared a young black man to a monkey when commenting on an inter-racial marriage. 

However, in recent months these ethnic tensions have escalated. 70 international law experts warned about the risk of genocide in Darfur last November, a process which  is arguably already  underway. Massacres like that of El Genina and attacks on Internally Displaced Persons camps in Ardamata saw members of the non-Arab Masalit ethnic group murdered and enslaved. Masalit women and girls are reported to be held in chains and “slave-like conditions”, repeatedly raped while called names like “dirt” and “slave”. The exclusive targeting of non-Arab Sudanese peoples and the vocabulary used to degrade them bears shocking resemblance to race relations in 19th century Sudan, demonstrating the danger of a racialised Sudanese-Arab identity. 

Sudan’s future looks bleak. The UN now reports that 25 million people, 14 million of whom are children, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance and the conflict has provoked the largest child displacement crisis in the world. The international community’s failure to orchestrate a strong response capable of preventing genocidal violence has empowered figures like Hemedti and his armed thugs in the RSF to continue massacring innocent civilians. If states seek to uphold the legitimacy of human rights and international law, they cannot choose to ignore Sudan’s plight. Constructing an inclusive, non-racialised, national identity that rejects Arab supremacy could prevent future eruptions of ethnic violence. This ambitious goal however, is far from attainable at present and the long process of achieving it can only begin when Sudanese citizens are no longer facing war. Sudan must overcome its racist past, but first it must survive this ongoing catastrophe.