Darfur

The war in Darfur, Sudan, began in 2003. Decades of drought and desertification made land and water resources scare, creating strife between the non-Arab Muslim farming communities of Darfur and Arab Muslim nomadic tribes seeking water and land for their livestock. Resentment of the Arab-dominated government support for the nomads led two non-Arab rebel groups to conduct a series of raids in 2003, killing several hundred government troops. The government reaction, ferocious, genocidal, marked the beginning of what continues today, mounting aerial attacks and unleashing a ground force in the form of the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, with the intent to systematically eliminate the non-Arab Muslim population in Darfur. Despite a massive international advocacy movement and the issuance by the ICC of an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Al-Bashir, mass murders, rape, and the razing of villages continue today; more than 250,000 civilians have been killed, and 2.5 million displaced, and the conflict has spread across Sudan’s borders into Chad and the Central African Republic.

Darfur

Film

Documentary:

  • Darfur Diaries: Message from Home, Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro, directors, 2005
  • The Devil Came on Horseback, Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, directors, 2007
  • Darfur Now, Ted Braun, director, 2007
  • Sand and Sorrow, Paul Freedman, director, 2007

Literature

Narrative nonfiction:

  • Halima Bashir, Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur, One World, Oxford, 2008
  • Don Cheadle and John Prendergast, Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, Hyperion, New York, 2007
  • Daoud Hari, The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur, Random House, 2008
  • Jen Marlowe, Aisha Bain, Adam Shapiro, and Paul Rusesabagina, Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival, Nation Books, New York, 2006
  • Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace, The Devil Came On Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, Public Affairs, 2008

Fiction:

  • Philip Caputo, Acts of Faith, Vintage Books USA, New York, 2006
  • Dave Eggers, What is the What: The Life of Valentino Achak Deng, McSweeney’s, San Francisco, 2006