environmental degradation as a cause of conflict in - Steiner Graphics

FOOTNOTES1It is not my purpose here to discuss in detail the media coverage; most can findup-to-date information via Google. From my experience, the most accessible andreliable source is Human Rights Watch, while Dr. Reeves provides daily analyses. Seealso, Sudan Focal Point-Africa by John Ashworth and Justice Africa’s Prospects forPeace in Sudan by Alex deWaal.2A personal caveat needs to be entered here. I did fieldwork in Darfur between 1968and 1977; my primary focus was on the pre-colonial history of the region. I havepublished three books and some fifty articles on the history and culture of Darfur,but it is important to emphasise that I did my research before the mid-1980s whendrought and desertification began to bring about far-reaching environmental,demographic and political changes.3From the Arabic, jann (jinn) ‘spirit, devil’ and jawad ‘horse’.4See the two fundamental articles of Gunnar Haaland, ‘Economic determinants inethnic processes’, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, ed. F. Barth, London 1969,58-73, and ‘Nomadism as an economic career among the sedentaries of the SudanSavanna Belt’, in Essays in Sudan Ethnography, eds. I. Cunnison & W. James, London1972, 149-72. On the creation of identity from a different perspective, see O’Fahey& Hasan Imam Hasan, ‘Notes on the Mileri of Jabal Mun’, Sudan Notes and Records,li, 1970, 152-61.5See my State and Society in Darfur, London 1980.6The ethnographic and historical data is exceptionally rich. The main collectionsinclude the papers of the Rev. Dr. A.J. Arkell from the 1920s & 30s (c. 2,400pages; School of Oriental and African Studies, London); the manuscripts of a selftaughtSudanese historian, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahim (in Arabic; National RecordsOffice, Khartoum); the several hundred documents and decrees (the earliest fromc. 1710) that I photographed in the 1970s (copies in Bergen and Khartoum)); theseveral hundred pages of notes I made from the Province colonial archives in thesame period, which archives were subsequently destroyed by accident during theal-Numayri era [copies of my notes are accessible in Khartoum and Bergen], and myfield-notes. It would be possible to write in detail on the sultans and their attitudeto the environment, a theme I neglected in my writings. I hope in the years tocome to put as much of this material as possible on the Web.7State and Society, 98-99.8See my ‘The Conquest of Darfur, 1873-1882’, Sudan Notes and Records, N.S. 1, 1998,47-67. Some of al-Zubayr’s arguments justifying his conquest of a Muslim statehave their echoes today.9See further A.B. Theobald, ‘Ali Dinar:Last Sultan of Darfur, 1898-1916, London 1965.10See R.S. O’Fahey and M.I. Abu Salim, Land in Dar Fur, Cambridge 1983.30