'A Struggle For Power'; Did a split in the ruling clique lead to the Darfur crisis?

Byline: Tom Masland

The tarp huts broil in a sand-blasted desert, but there's nothing disorganized about the Iridimi refugee camp in Chad, 80 kilometers from the Sudan border. By the time U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived here on his recent visit, international relief agencies had brought enough food and medicine to the camp to hold down disease and mortality rates among the 15,000 residents. Indeed, children were strong enough to serve as props. Some held up signs, written in English: DISARM THE JANJAWEED AND STOP THE GENOCIDE. A white-robed camp leader read out a letter denouncing the political and economic "marginalization" of Sudan's Darfur region by the Islamist government in Khartoum.

The roots of the Darfur crisis, a humanitarian emergency in western Sudan that threatens the lives of roughly a million displaced people, aren't as simple as the slogans suggest. What is clear is that, as Annan said on his plane, the dysfunctional Khartoum government knows it has "lost the propaganda war." And for good reason: although the violence is diminishing, and an expanded aid pipeline has begun to flow smoothly, innocent African farmers have been raped, executed and starved by nomads known as Janjaweed ("armed horsemen") who served as proxies for the Sudan government.

Although widely understood as purely an ethnic conflict, this tragedy stems from politics mixed with tribalism. Darfur is home to 85 tribes, roughly divided between farmers and herders forced to compete as the Sahara advanced. The most influential are the Zagawa, Muslim Africans whose homeland straddles the Sudan-Chad border. In 1998, the ruling Islamist clique in Khartoum split. The winner of this power struggle, President Omar al Bashir, jailed or purged important Zagawa Army commanders and government ministers, core supporters of Islamist dissident Hassan al-Turabi. They then made common cause with John Garang, a former enemy who heads the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Army, which had been at war with the Khartoum government since 1983. The dissidents joined the top ranks of the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army and the smaller Justice and Equality movement, both of which seek regional autonomy. The breakaway group also cultivated ties with Chad President Idriss Deby, himself a Zagawa, and Eritrean President Isaias Afawerki, who supports a separatist group on Sudan's eastern border.

Under intense U.S. pressure, Khartoum and the southern rebels two years ago agreed to a ceasefire and entered ...