Conflict In Darfur

With reference to one recent major international conflict, analyse and assess the geographical impacts of the conflict on the area(s) involved. Darfur is in the desert region of located in the far west of Sudan, the biggest country in Africa. Darfur, meaning ‘land of the Fur’ is separated into three regions: North Darfur, South Darfur and West Darfur. The North of Darfur was home to the Arabs whereas the South was home to the Blacks. Since the British left in 1956, Darfur has faced many years of tension over land and grazing rights between the mostly nomadic Arabs, and the black African farmers. In 1989 An Arab leader called Omar al-Bashir came to power in a coup and tried to remove the African presence in Darfur. The Sudan Liberation Army
(SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) began attacking government targets in early 2003, accusing the government of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs The effect of the conflict had some serious environmental, economic and social impacts. The social impacts are that over 300,000 Darfurian civilians died- an estimated 150,000 from violent attacks.
Over 200,000 have fled abroad, mainly to Chad where they will face further violence as they will be refugees and more susceptible to the crime. 90 per cent of the villages of Darfur targeted ethnic groups have been destroyed as the Arabs were trying to get rid of the Africans. Also 3.5 million people are dependent on international humanitarian assistance. For that amount of people to depend on international help is a problem because if the other nations can’t provide then those people will suffer and not have a very good quality of life. However Darfur has the biggest humanitarian operation in the world. There are currently 14,000 aid workers. The economic impacts are that Darfur spent a lot of money on military weapons and so now the country struggle for basic resources. It is seen that in 2004 Darfur spent $1,352.71 on military weapons which especially went to the Janjaweed to help them fight against the rebel groups, in particular the SLA and
JEM. Also the loss of money from the livelihood of people’s farms after the drought there was serious consequences resulting in loss of food and animal stock which lost the country money. The damage to buildings and infrastructures meant that it cost a lot of money to build back some of the buildings such as schools which were destroyed by the weapons of the militias. Some of the environmental impacts are during the drought the land was abandoned by the owners and when they did come back to cultivate new land the drought had led to desertification and soil erosion which meant that crops could not grown on the land.
Also people were forced to cut downs trees in the forest to help supply materials for the building industry and this led to deforestation. The country suffered when crops couldn’t grow as it meant they were losing money as well as a resource for living so this had a long term effect. In 2006 a Darfur Peace Agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Liberation Movement of Minni Minnawi was signed. The agreement was signed by only one rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement, and rejected by the Justice and Equality Movement resulting in a continuation of the conflict. The agreement includes provisions for wealth sharing and power sharing and established a Transitional Darfur Regional Authority to help administer Darfur until a referendum could be held on the future of the region. The leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Minni Minnawi, was appointed Senior Assistant to the President of Sudan and Chairman of the transitional authority in 2007. In my opinion president Bashir is to blame as he could have done more to stop this conflict but he
didn’t. He decided to support the Janjaweed’s crime instead of trying to protect the people of his country. This conflict as a whole has caused massive destruction to Darfur and the people of the country. Darfur has lost many of its people and I think it will take a long time for them to build back up their country and to put an end to conflict once and for all. However we the future does seem bright for Darfur as they are on their way to ending conflict with all the peace agreements whereas the Palestine and Israel conflict doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon as they can never come to an agreement about the land so in this case Darfur is quite fortunate.