Pessimist Manifesto

Gérard Prunier has a profound understanding of the region on the Horn of Africa. He has studied Sudan, Rwanda and Ethiopia intensively for many years, writing a standard work on the Rwandan genocide in 1995.

Particularly through his work as a researcher at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS) in Paris and Director of the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, he has not only studied the region from afar, but also spends a great deal of his time there. He knows the country and its people inside out.

In his book on the war in Darfur, Prunier takes a very broad-based approach, showing the historical basis to Darfur's neglect and explaining how ethnic conflicts arise, often for profane reasons.

Conflict over resources and regional influences

But the book does not simply provide an abstract historical discussion of the relationship between the political centre and periphery. Prunier describes how this relationship became politicised, developing over several decades even from before independence.

He explains the fragmented structure of the Sudanese state, and particularly of Darfur – the country's "Wild West” – cut off, never understood and reviled for many years.

The fact that the conflict was only recognised and dealt with far too late can be put down to the common religious identity of Darfur's otherwise heterogeneous population.

The conflict escalated into open war in 2003. Due to the droughts and increasing number of animal herds, the settled Fur, Zaghawa and Masaleit ethnic groups refused to let nomadic herders pass through their fields.

Idriss Déby's takeover of power in Chad (Déby is also from the Zaghawa community) also influenced the balance of power in Darfur. On top of that, Libyan head of state Muammar Ghaddafi also provided support for Arab groupings and Idriss Déby's Zaghawas against Hissène Habré's regime in Chad.

Radical self-interest

Prunier gives an overview of how the powers-that-be in Khartoum and the neighbouring countries – especially Libya – have dealt with Darfur, revealing how the neighbours played out the political and military implications of the Cold War at the cost of the population of Darfur.

He also accuses the south-Sudanese rebel organisation SPLA of moving into the region for reasons of self-interest.

​​Under SPLA commander Daud Bolad (once a close friend and ally to the Islamist military regime in Khartoum), the leader of the SPLA, John Garang, attempted a poorly prepared military invasion of South Darfur in 1991, which failed miserably.

The consequence was not only a fragmentation of the groupings in the region, with the Fur fighting alongside Bolad against Murahaleen militia sent by the government.

The move also discredited the south-Sudanese liberation movement in Darfur. And now that the movement is part of the government, it has been ignoring the needs of the marginalised in Darfur.

Bitterness and cynicism

Prunier comments on the events in the conflict with unreserved bitterness and cynical distance. He has nothing but contempt for the negotiations between the government and the rebels led by the African Union in the Nigerian capital of Abuja from 2004 to 2005. His book is a pessimist manifesto – a plainspoken accusation that proposes no alternatives or perspectives for solving the conflict.

Gerard Prunier has been a researcher at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques in Paris since 1984 and Director of the Centre Francais d'Etudes Ethiopiennes in Addis Ababa since 2001.Prunier traces the origins of the larger regional dimensions, which are now playing an ever-greater role in the conflict in Darfur. He points out that the conflict in Chad is not just a spillover effect of the war in Darfur, but is rooted in the region's political interests of the past decades.

He introduces the cultural construction of race as a key term of the discussion, describing how the war might reverse the balance of power in Sudan – if religion were to lose its function as a binding identity factor (approx. 75 percent of the Sudanese population is Muslim) in favour of ethnic origin (approx. 65 percent of the population are of African origin). Such a switch could spell out the end of the Islamist military regime in Khartoum.

Lack of constructive criticism

For Prunier, each Security Council resolution is as vague and empty as the next, and peace negotiations are as much an illusion as the far too small and weak African Union mission.

​​His bitter conclusion is that the international community has failed due to its lack of interest and clarity.

It is hard to accept that part of Sudan could be declared a "failed state” at the centre of an authoritarian regime whose elites grow richer by the day from oil revenues and whose policies strike a chord in parts of the Arab world, and find politically disinterested co-players in the emerging superpowers of China and India.

Prunier's precise historical investigation of the conflict in Darfur is matched by an equally damning assessment of the previous attempts at solutions. Be they political or military, Prunier regards them all as a diversion tactic on the part of the international community, the African Union and other parties.

Anyone expecting a less cynical and more solution-oriented position from the expert Prunier, which might offer a perspective for the conflict, will be sorely disappointed.

Annette Weber

© Qantara.de 2007

Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

Gerard Prunier: "Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (Crises in World Politics)", Cornell University Press 2005/2007.

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