African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Swaziland
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Swaziland
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
Politics

Darfur: Local Understandings of the Violence

By Alex Hinton
March 16, 2009
1307
1
Share:

Darfur and the Crime of Genocide is a terrific book, one that deserves praise for doing at least three important things. First, the authors, John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond make a clear, rigorous, effective argument that the mass violence in Darfur constitutes genocide. This is significant given that previously this argument has too often been made in a general manner (by politicians and activists) or in a somewhat ambiguous manner (by legal professionals and academics).

Second, in making their argument, Hagan and Rymond-Richmond creatively and methodically draw on the Atrocities Documentation Survey, carried out with Darfur refugees in the summer of 2004. This data set, which had languished in a State Department archive, enables the authors to map out key details about the pattern, intensity, motivations, leadership, and sequence of the violence. For this alone they deserve commendation. And, finally, Hagan and Rymond-Richmond illustrate how criminology, a field that, despite the obvious relevance, has long neglected the study of genocide, can enhance our understanding of this topic.

Having said that there are, as in all books, issues that need further development or explanation, particularly with regard to local understandings of the conflict.

First, the data set, which is one of the book’s great strengths, nevertheless has limitations. While the authors draw on speeches and interviews whenever possible, the bottom line is that much of their argument is based upon the reports of victims. There is nothing wrong with this since authors must use what data they have in hand. But we will have to wait until we have more primary documents and, especially, interviews with former perpetrators to have a more complete understanding of what transpired in Darfur and for what reasons.

This leads into my second point. At the same time I appreciate the way the authors develop their argument around “collective racial intent” and agree that this was no doubt a factor in the violence, I suspect there is more to the story. The Tora Bora idiom is a case in point. While the authors highlight this as a “polarized racial identification” (p. 206), Tora Bora is also clearly linked to issues of collective fear, threat, and danger. And this, in turn, hints that there are other motives in play that are not fully addressed in the volume.

More broadly, I would have liked to have seen a more complex account of perpetrator motivation. Sudanese leaders may have given racist speeches and racist epithets may have been used in the violence, but this does not mean that this is the only – let alone primary – motivation for the violence. “Landless, nomadic Arab groups” are not just “pawns” who can readily be imbued with a “collective racial intent to kill, rape, and destroy” – they are complex human beings like all of us who vary in their motives and beliefs. We may not have the data to explore this complexity, but it should at least be acknowledged. Moreover, even as the authors disavow primordialism, this sort of language seeps back in when, for example, they speak of the “fanatical fury and frenzy” (p. 221) of the perpetrators. Finally, on this point, I would have liked an explanation of the “racial difference” means in the context of Sudan. Does it, for example, have the biological connotations of the EuroAmerican concept? If not, what, exactly, does it mean in the context of Darfur?

Last, and briefly, I would have liked a bit more history and complication in the volume. I realize that that the authors have an important argument – that Darfur was a genocide – that they want to make. And they do so with admirable clarity and thoroughness. However, at times I felt as if some of the complexities of the situation were being pushed to the side to fit the argument (for example: how fluid are group identifications in Darfur? To what extent do members of groups switch sides? Is there any variation within the group categories? How has this varied historically and in terms of place?). On the other hand, the authors are well aware that much of this terrain has been covered by other books and perhaps felt it unnecessary.

Regardless of such questions, I appreciate John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond’s creative, well-written, and soundly argued volume. They have made an important contribution to our understanding of the Darfur situation, one that will be central to arguments about the pattern of the mass violence and whether or not it constitutes genocide.

Alex Hinton is a professor at Rutgers University.

Previous Article

Darfur: Appealing the Genocide Decision?

Next Article

Rectifying the Neglect of Sudan’s Judiciary

Alex Hinton

1 comment

  1. Ibrahim Adam 19 March, 2009 at 03:14

    Yawn….more half-baked intellectual indulgence from the US. Rutgers University? As per the norm, many time zones away from Sudan and far removed from the ‘subjective universes’ of state and non-state actors in Darfur; see my earlier post on this: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2009/02/15/the-rush-to-nazify-sudan-by-us-academics/ .

    There’s a simple – and fatal – problem with this book: it’s based on politically manipulated (read JEM) testimony.

    “Racial epithets” indeed; question: I know many Americans who served in the 03-? Iraq war and both they and many others in the US army routinely, if privately and sometimes in battle (to get psyched-up), used the term “Sand Nig…. or “Rag Heads” (fill in the blanks) to describe the Iraqi insurgents. Would that make the US’s war in Iraq one of “collective racial intent”? Most people – without an axe to grind – would of course remark “No – that would be seriously stretching it”. My point precisely about Darfur…..

    Another problem about the book? For God’s sake somebody please tell Prof Hagan and Prof Rymond-Richmond that most of the Sudanese on the cover are actually southern Sudanese!!!! Think that – and the patently activist book title – says it all about the accuracy of “Darfur and the Crime of Genocide” in helping shed some accurate understanding of the dynamics of the Darfur conflict.

    Ibrahim Adam,

    Country Risk Consultant

    El Fasher, North Darfur, Sudan

Leave a reply Cancel reply

  • Politics

    Will (re)constructing the CAR’s security sector help protect its population? – By Gabriella Ingerstad

  • Politics

    Piketty in Africa: heat, hype and heterodox economics

  • African ArgumentsAfrican Arguments Book SeriesAfrican VoicesDebating IdeasDecolonisationPodcasts

    African Voices, African Arguments Podcast: Episode Two; Interview with Alcinda Honwana

  • 80845
    Followers

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Most read

  • kenya refugee camps closure

    Whether or not Kenya closes its camps, much damage has been done

  • Will President Samia Suluhu Hassan address gender inequality in Tanzania?

    Tanzania has a female president. Does it have a feminist president?

  • central african republic us: Several foreign partners are involved in the CAR, from the UN to Russia and France, but few have the perceived neutrality to intervene diplomatically. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

    Why the Central African Republic and the US might need each other

  • elections: President Idriss Déby of Chad has been in power since 1990. Credit: Paul Kagame.

    Chad elections: President Déby seeks a sixth term in a region for old men

  • President Denis Sassou Nguesso won the 2021 elections to secure another term.

    Congo: Sassou Nguesso wins another term but still faces two big threats

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu