Ethnic cleansing and genocide in Sudan's colonial and post-colonial history

Ethnic Cleansing

The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines ethnic cleansing as the expulsion, impulsion or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority so as to achieve homogeneity. Ethnic cleansing is used as a euphemism for genocide despite its lack of a legal status. Genocide has been a leading cause of violent preventable death in the 20th and 21st century and has a higher body count than war (Blum, Stanton, Sagi and Richter, 2007). Ethnic cleansing as a term is a loan translation from the Serbian/Croatian phrase which directly translates to "ethnic cleaning." The term has been used extensively by the media in the former Yugoslavia while referring to the Yugoslav wars and became popular in the international media around 1992. Ethnic cleansing in the 20th century has emerged from a lethal combination of social Darwinism, racist genetic theory and nationalism (Blum, Stanton, Sagi and Richter, 2007). Ethnic cleansing mainly serves to remove the conditions for potential and actual opposition which can be political, terrorist, guerrilla or military by removing physically any potential or actual hostile ethnic communities. It has however been sometimes motivated by a doctrine that claims that a certain ethnic group is literally "unclean" such as the way Jews were viewed in medieval Europe. It is more usually seen as a rational but brutal means by which total control is ensured over an area.

Social Impact of the Ethnic Cleansing in Sudan

According to Filou (2006), since gaining independence from Britain in 1956, the Sudan governments have always been controlled by the Arab ethnic minority. Bildad Al Sudan in Arabic is where the country derives its name which means "Land of the Blacks" (2006). British imperialism according to Simpson (2004), followed the policy of divide and rule in the colonization of the country. It firmly entrenched leaders of the three main northern Arab tribes as the main conduits for colonial rule ensuring all the main economic development took place along the Nile and in and around Khartoum in the North. The regime closed off southern Sudan and banned Arabs or Muslims from the North from travelling or settling in the region due to the colonialists' fear of the development of a Sudanese nationalist movement which threatened to unite the country against British rule (Simpson, 2004). Simpson (2004) further wrote that the British colonial masters in the south reintroduced elements of tribal rule that had been long abandoned due to the growth of the slave trade. The British attempted to divide up Darfur and giving control of particular geographical areas to specific ethnic groups for the first time in the region's history in an attempt of setting one tribe against another and thus control all through payments to the tribal leaders. The division, Simpson (2004) says, which were either introduced or strengthened under British rule echoed down over the years and manifested themselves especially since the late 1980s.

The country has faced numerous invasions and has historically been an important source of slaves for Arab traders (Filou, 2006). This has resulted in the country being divided in hundreds of black skinned Sudanese, Arab and mixed ethnicities, tribes and languages. In the 1956 ethnic census, Arabs represented less than 40% and black skinned Sudanese more than 50% of the Sudanese population. The Arab governments, except for a quiet period of 10 years, have tried to the force mainly the Black Animist and Christian South to adopt the Arab language, culture and Islam. In the 1980s, this imposition took another level when the Sudanese government instituted the Shariah law which is the traditional Islamic law. This included punishments ranging from amputations for theft to public lashings for alcohol possession in all regions of the country (Filou, 2006).

Simpson (2004) writes that the Islamist military regime of President Al -- Bashir launched brutal air offensives and mobilized local Arab-speaking armed militias, who are also known as the Janjawiid, against the thirty or more different ethnic groups which comprise the Darfur's population, therefore obliterating hundreds of villages and towns in the process. The definition given by Williams (2006) for the Janjawiid is a man with a gun on a horse. Many of the Janjawiid leaders according to Simpson (2004) were former members of the Islamic Legion that had been formed by Colonel Gaddafi of Libya is the 1980s in his pursuit of the formation of a wider empire in North Africa. They were militiamen who on their return brought with them racist anti-African and chauvinist, pro-Arab ideals into a situation that was already tense. Al-Bashir's regime offered them military support and encouragement which resulted in the beginning of a vicious counter-insurgency which has been characteristic of Darfur (Simpson, 2004). The main intention was to smash their 18-month long mass uprising that was led by the Sudanese Liberation Movement also known as SLM and the more Islamist Justice and equality Movement (JEM) that were against decades of discrimination in terms of funding, education and jobs within the state and positions in the military (Ingrao, 1997).

The United Nations estimated that up to 2 million people had been displaced internally and across the border to neighboring Chad by 2004 while 50,000 had died by the hand of the government-backed military operations or form starvation. Palmberg (2004) wrote that the Sudanese government began arming the Janjawiid in response to a February 2003 insurgency in Darfur by two rebel organizations that drew from three non-Arab ethnic groups. This resulted in the militias and government adopting a scorched-earth policy, within three months, of attacking the civilian towns instead of rebel bases. The attacks escalated sharply in December and continued even after the signing of an official ceasefire between the rebels and the government in April of the same year. Palmberg (2004) further writes that instead of the ceasefire being enforced as it promised security for civilians as well as access for humanitarian workers, the Sudanese government continued to collude with the Janjawiid as well as denying the existence of a problem. This is because the Southern peace process was used as leverage to demand that the world ignore atrocities to the west.

Psychological Impact of Ethnic Cleansing

The ethnic cleansing efforts have moved, in the last few years, from the Black Animist and Christian South to the Black Muslim region which is Darfur. More than 400,000 civilians were slaughtered and more than 2 million displaced and living in squalid camps with constant fear of the next Arab raid in less than three years (Filou, 2006). Another psychological impact of the ethnic cleansing is that it has resulted in the victims have been left with physical and psychological scars as a result of what they underwent. Some of the survivors have undergone mass rape, bombardment and destruction (Simpson, 2004).

The psychological, anthropological and social impact of the ethnic cleansing in Sudan has been reflected by historical divisions becoming more defined and leading to civil war, particularly between the northern based and Islamic military regime and the Christian and animist south (Simpson, 2004). While under the conditions of crushing poverty and without a strong movement based on the working class and peasantry and are able to explain and fight for a socialist alternative to the devastation that capitalism and imperialism brought along, conflicts that arise from religious and ethnic differences are bound to develop (Simpson, 2004). Simpson (2004) further writes that the reactionary elements within many ethnic groupings have intervened into the vacuum and as a result increased the already present divisions, thereby creating an ideological basis for increasing these divisions as a means of underpinning the hold they have established on the power amongst the masses.

In conclusion, the ethnic cleansing that is taking place in Sudan and especially Darfur has surpassed the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Simpson (2004) wrote that the ongoing cycle of wars, poverty and starvation, which is the lot of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, is the product of neo-liberal and imperialist exploitation at its worst. The impact of these wars on the continent's population can only begin to be solved through overthrowing the capitalist system which was their main cause and creating of a confederation of African states that was voluntary.