Darfur Crisis: Mediation Failure (1)

Por Ahmed M. Mohamedain

To help solve a certain problem necessitates knowledge of the causes, circumstances and factors that have instigated it. That knowledge seemed to be scarce from the very outset, if not totally absent, in the key figures of the team directly involved in addressing Darfur crisis at its earlier stages. This overlooked factor directly led to the change of course of Darfur crisis to an unprecedented worse saga of profound human suffering.

Indeed, Darfur was barely known to the outside world before 2003 except for one person who has, besides being a key mediator, had the only, presumably, relevant knowledge of Darfur when he visited the father of Musa Hilal last century in 1985 in Aamo (pronounced as Ammo in indigenous languages). The coexistence of different ethnic groups in Aamo area was described by Alex de Waal as being “worse, the villages who had always played host to camel nomads were now barring their migrations, and stopping them from using pastures and wells.” which was unequivocally untrue justified by the very author as ‘Sheikh Hilal was unbendingly proud of his nomadic way of life.” among the villagers of the area for centuries. De Waal totally lost the truck by blaming the villagers in the restriction of Hiallal’s movements and thereby utterly ignoring the fact that the government of Sudan at that time had migration regulations in place in relation to movements of nomads. De Waal appears to suggest that the local villagers deserve the treatment that Musa Hilal was widely accused of in carrying it out, on behalf of the Government of Sudan, on the civilian population in Darfur. Alex de Waal seems to hold Darfur villagers, represented by the villagers of Aamo area, accountable for the reasons behind the genocide orchestrated by the government of Sudan and its allied militias, the Janjawids. Read more >>>