APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 100 100 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL weapons, to lessen the possibility of attacks. Acceptance of the agreement made it possible for the market to bring together pastoralist and peasant communities and to function as a venue for the groups to reconnect and interact peacefully. Every Saturday more than twenty truck loads of commodities arrive at the Treij market, where African and Arab tribesmen and women intermix and exchange goods peacefully despite the continuation of the crisis.44 In the foregoing example, the mutual interests of the Arabs and Africans, rooted in survival, proved stronger than the suspicion and mistrust that violence has created. The reappearance in different parts of rural Darfur of rural markets has been driven by the need to exchange goods and to benefit in a way characteristic of previous pastoralistpeasant community relationships.45 The resurrection of Treij and other rural markets indicates the extent to which the economies and the livelihoods of the two communal groups are too interwoven for the widespread violence to disconnect. Peaceful interactions in markets, hospitals, and large urban and smaller rural centers that were not possible during 2003 and 2004 had begun a widespread comeback in Darfur by 2006 and have been on the increase ever since.46 Reconciliation Initiatives The examples presented above, and others, show a grass-root predisposition towards reconciliation and the restoration of peace in attitudes and forms of interaction that bring the two polarized groups closer. There are also cases in which grass-root reconciliation initiatives have already restored peace in communities with mixed populations. These materialized, without outside intervention or involvement, to restore normality to lives upset by violence and mistrust. Such initiatives at the micro level, driven by mutual interests, have proved to be ahead of politicians’ thinking in making peace a reality. One grass-root effort involved reconciliation between groups of diverse tribal origins in southern Nyala that formed peacefully coexisting, mixed sedentary farming communities to practice goz and wadi cultivation.47 Members of these communities had not been directly drawn into the grand conflict, but the widespread violence had generally created inter-group tensions leading to polarization along African and Arab 44. Interview, Shartai Yagoub. 45. Rural markets have also emerged in Amara, Artala, Delieg, Garsila, Mukjar, Um Dukhun, and Waro, among other places. Interview, Mohamed Ahmed Mahy El Dein, top Darfur local administrator, Khartoum, February 2010. 46. Informal interview, R. Richard, former food security monitor with the World Food Programme in Garsila, Nyala, July 2006; informal interview, Naglaa Zakaria, field monitor for the Sudanese Popular Committee for Relief and Rehabilitation (SPCR), Nyala, July 2006; informal interview, Salah Hassan, SPCR officer, Nyala, July 2006; interview, El Hadi Omer Mohamed, senior government officer in Geneina (West Darfur), Khartoum, 2010; interview, Ismael Dafalla, lecturer at the University of El Fashir, Khartoum, 2010. 47. The area includes the villages of Dreeb Al Reh, Galadi, Higier Tono, Kwala, and Sunta and is inhabited by Dajo, Fur, and Zaghawa (African tribes) along with Hotiyya, Thaalba, and Torjum (tribes of Arab identity). Goz is sandy land on which farming depends on rain and is mainly devoted to millet cultivation; wadi farming is practiced on silty clay land in the proximity of seasonal water courses, and at times wells can be used for irrigation, tapping shallow underground water. Vegetables and fruits are the main crops produced on small plots of land.