The Sudan Handbook

230 thE sudan handbook

Land and Identity

Darfuris’ sense of marginalization may have laid the basis for conflict,
but it does not in itself explain the militarization of thousands of civil-
ians. Whether they chose to join the rebels or the janjawid, Darfurians
entered into war against each other for local reasons, which go back for
the most part to the 1970’s and ‘80’s. Nimeiri’s regime, initially Nasserite
and Marxist, suppressed two important legacies of the sultanate: the
traditional leaders incorporated by the British into the Native Admin-
istration and the land tenure system. Historically, Darfur was divided
into territories ruled over by chiefs from different ethnic groups who
distributed land to those who needed it, regardless of their ethnicity.
This was a system that the British maintained, and which seems to have
given Darfur a certain stability up to that point. Today, the land tenure
system in Darfur is often understood as a division of the region into tribal
territories. However, the historic reality is somewhat more complex.
Historically, the land tenure system had two aspects. The first was
the dar system. The sultanate was almost entirely divided into dar
(territories), at the head of which the sultans placed or recognized tradi-
tional, hereditary chiefs from different ethnic groups (called shartay, or
sometimes melik). They were not chief of one tribe, but of an area: they
had to welcome and treat members of diverse ethnic groups living in or
passing through their dar equally. This was, therefore, more of an admin-
istrative system than one of land tenure. However, by giving land to a
dynasty belonging to a particular group, the system could be interpreted
as one of collective land ownership by ethnic groups. Historically, this
ownership may have been largely symbolic, but today it is the basis for
claims for tribal territories. As a Fur intellectual put it, ‘the land belongs
to the community which the shartay belongs to. Traditionally, the shartay
is responsible for the land, but the land belongs to the community.’
The second element of the land tenure system is the hawakir (singular
hakura). In modern language, in Darfur as in Chad, the term designates
private property of small proportion: a field, a courtyard in a house.
In legal documents of which the oldest date back to the end of the
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors

(www.riftvalley.net).