The Sudan Handbook

226 thE sudan handbook

in fact sided mostly with the government, while others have remained

neutral. As the war has progressed, an increasing number have joined

opposition movements. But in Darfur the very definition of who is and

who is not and Arab is problematic. Arabs in Darfur often claim lineages

which stretch back to Arabia, over hundreds of years and hundreds of

miles. And in recent years, even before the war in Darfur, Arab identity

has been reinforced by Pan-Arabism, particularly the Libyan version. But

local Arabs often have skin that is as dark as that of their neighbours

who claim to be of different origin. Attempts at Arabization have often

been denounced in the countries of the Sahel; they mask the profound

Africanization of those Arabs that live there.

This is not a question of religion: almost all Darfurians are Muslims,

and the historic Islamization of the region owes less to the nomadic

Arabs than to the non-Arab marabouts and wandering scholars who

adhered to Sufism imported from West Africa. Language is not neces-

sarily a good criterion either: certain non-Arab groups (the Berti and

the Birgid for example) adopted Arabic some time ago as their mother

tongue, while those who claim a notional Arab identity, like some of the

Misseriya Jebel and Fellata, yet still speak other languages.

In the past, the Arabs of Darfur were mostly nomadic pastoralists,

whereas most of the farming communities were non-Arab. Here, as

in other parts of the Muslim world, the word ‘Arab’ was often used

specifically to mean nomads that still lived in the same way that their

mythic ancestors had done on the other side of the Red Sea before the

great expansion from the Arabian peninsula in the middle ages. Such

differences in modes of production and ways of life can play a more

important part in conflict over resources than ethnicity as such. And

this, consequently, is another area where the Arab/non-Arab distinc-

tion in Darfur breaks down. Some Arab groups have long farmed the

land; and some non-Arab groups (such as the Zaghawa and the Meidob)

have been primarily pastoralists and stockraisers. During the course of

the last few decades, moreover, Arabs have settled more and more and

converted to farming, blurring further the boundaries between groups.

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors

(www.riftvalley.net).