[
This is a post I thought I ought to qualify, since the odd person comes across it in the course of a search. Since I wrote it I know I lot more about the issue, as most of us do in fact. The Darfur conflict is clearly strongly racial in character. The only thing to be said for my argument outlined below is that the Islamic government of Sudan is clearly still involved in the ethnic cleansing of Darfur- and should be held responsible.]


The BBC, Islam, and Sudan. I speak of the troubles in the Darfur region of Sudan. The BBC's approach to Islam is seen in this report on the plight of the population of Darfur as they are hounded out of their dwellings by what the BBC calls the 'Jangaweed' (elsewhere referred to, with more a convincing ring, as the 'Jingaweit'), a 'shadowy group of Arab militiamen'. In an article on AllAfrica.com, Roger Winter of USAID is quoted describing 'Arab militias, aerial bombardment and a massive pattern of rape.' To be fair to the BBC, their Question and Answer article on the conflict is fairly thorough, but why go to a Q & A when you feel you have a fair impression from the headline article? Except that you don't have a fair impression, and even in the Q & A, what's clear is that the BBC doesn't want you to associate Islam with the Darfur conflict. The merest possibility of a link to Islam is ignored. It's strictly racial.


What the BBC omits to mention is that in Darfur, as formerly elsewhere in the Sudan, 'non-Muslim Africans are being driven from their homes there in a systematic way.'(AllAfrica.com). Moreover, Charles Snyder of the US Government opined recently that they are just 'largely' Arab militia. That would mean that the tribal quality that the BBC ascribes them is questionable, with obvious implications when the BBC tries a naturalised explanation of the situation by saying

'The Janjaweed are pastoral and they have been hard hit by desertification, which has greatly diminished water resources and pasture in Darfur.', and their objective is 'to drive the African tribesmen from their homes and force them to abandon valuable water points and pasture. '

You don't realise unless you read the Q & A that the Jingaweit are not a tribe, but a anti-rebel militia formed by the Sudanese Government. It's hardly consistent with 'aerial bombardment' to suppose that this is just another traditional tribal conflict, but the sentence 'The Jangaweed are pastoral' certainly implies it. However, it's well known that Islam is spreading down from Northern Africa- and that is the background to the Sudanese wars of the last twenty years. In Kenya (where several years ago I happened to live), which borders both Sudan and Somalia, Somalian refugees in Nairobi who became converts to Christianity were sought out by armed gangs of Somali Muslims- and shot. I knew people in fear of their lives. That's not to mention Islamic terrorism: the 1998 bombing of the US embassy, which killed nearly 200 mainly Kenyan people, or the more recent hotel bombing near Mombassa (centre of Islam on the East coast of Africa). What's bizarre is that the BBC's article or their Q & A on Darfur do not once use any of the words 'Islam', 'Muslim' or 'non-Muslim'.


The BBC in this article would like to pretend the Jingaweit are an isolated problem, and, oddly enough, so would the Sudanese government. Charles Snyder, however, says at a US Senate subcommitee meeting that

'We have rejected the government's claim that, while it may have originally supported the Jingaweit, they are now out of its control. These militias are proxies for the government and Khartoum bears responsibility for their conduct, whether they say they have control or not.'

This rather undercuts the BBC account, which explains disingenuously that 'The government has been at pains to disassociate itself from the Janjaweed. It has described the Janjaweed as a gang of criminals.' In other words, it has tried hard to counter the impression of its involvement, assuming it is just an impression. Otherwise, why would it require 'pains' to disassociate? No more guns, no more food, no more air support etc doesn't sound too arduous. Unless the BBC inform us of this real involvement, we are left with the merely notional 'association' (something it requires the Q & A to correct). Not that we have much to go on about the government of Sudan, for its full title of 'National Islamic Front (NLF) Government of Sudan' is not used by the BBC in this article or the Q & A. The BBC is mistaking its role. It should not require us to become experts in reading its materials, sifting report after report to put the jigsaw together. It should inform us of the brute facts.


One other fact worth mentioning: according to the sub-commitee meeting, 'The United Nations now claims that over a million civilians are internally displaced in Darfur, with an estimated 110,000 fleeing to Chad.' According to the BBC 'More than 100,000 refugees have fled western Sudan's Darfur region'. This gives you an indication of the BBC's approach to the Darfur crisis. Postscript: Since I drafted the above, a fresh BBC article has emerged reporting on a ceasefire agreement in the Darfur region. Here they give a fair account of the refugee displacement, but obviously this is tempered by the positive news of the ceasefire. Whether this ceasefire is genuine remains to be seen. What is sure is that the basic facts of the region are juggled around through the BBC's coverage in a way which undermines a potential outcry against the Islamic government in Khartoum and against the undoubted strain of Islam that advocates conflict to spread its creed.