The Sudan Handbook

232 thE sudan handbook

tenure system of the sultanate, which in some respects continued into
the Condominium. Crucially, the system was stable because, with all its
injustices, it allowed everyone to have access to land.
Up until the present conflict, Arab and non-Arab communities were
also systematically joined together through marriage. In El-Fasher, a
Kaytinga (Zaghawa of Fur ancestry) shartay remarked: ‘before the war we
married Arab women as a way of resolving disputes. Perhaps that’s the
answer: for us all to take Arab wives.’ One old white-beared Zaghawa
among his guests looked him straight in the eye and responded ‘Oh no!
If you do that I’ll kill you.’ Later the old man told me that he himself
married an Arab woman in the 1970s, but that he did not believe such a
thing would be possible nowadays. ‘If I did that today my family would
never want to see me again. Three weeks ago a Zaghawa girl married an
Arab. She did it against her parents’ will, and her family disowned her.’
‘Since this war began’, the shartay told me, ‘the communities that were
perfectly integrated with the Tunjur, like the Tarjem and Sahanin, have
demanded an Arab identity. It’s only since the conflict started that they
say: ‘we are Arabs’. All to have favours from the government. After the
rebels’ first successes, the government realized that the army was weak
and asked for help from the Arabs. Some of them had been waiting for
this opportunity for a long time. As soon as it presented itself they joined
the janjawid. We have never forbidden them from cultivating land, from
taking their animals to pasture. We didn’t refuse them anything, but
what they want is for that land to be their own. I’m not afraid and, if it
comes to it, we’ll die for this land.’
A fundamental distinction should be made between two aspects of the
land tenure question. One is a question of economic resources, of access
to grazing, water and cultivable land; the other is a matter of political
symbolism, the ownership of land as a mark of power. Both contribute to
the current conflict. But the fact that the communities deprived of land
tenure rights (essentially the camel-owning Abbala Arabs) are calling
into question the traditional system is above all political and symbolic:
for Darfurians, the land ownership rights are intrinsically linked to the
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors prestige of leadership.

(www.riftvalley.net).