APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 91 Darfur, Grand Conflict: Inter-Communal Rift and Grass-root Initiatives 91 seasons across farmlands in search of pasture and water for their animals. Customary rules regulated and ensured resource access rights for Arabs and for Africans along pastoralist passage corridors and facilitated economic and social exchanges between them.3 Individual clashes and conflicts were usually contained through judiyya, a traditional mediation mechanism, before they could escalate into broad, inter-tribal violence. During the 1990s, a combination of factors led to a significant rise in conflicts between pastoralists and peasant farmers, in which the former frequently attacked the latter. Armed movements in Darfur initially emerged as self-defense groups among African peasants for protection against Arab pastoralists.4 By 2002 these self-defense groups had developed into armed protest movements focusing on Darfur’s economic and political marginalization within the national context. The movements targeted the central government and demanded a national restructuring of power and wealth in which Darfur would have a fair share. When in 2003 the Darfur movements stormed El Fashir, the regional capital of North Darfur, in a dramatic show of force, the government responded harshly, deploying a militia that wrecked havoc among African peasant communities and gave the Darfur conflict its now-widespread image. The government-backed militia, the Janjawid, were mostly drawn from Arab tribes, but not usually from those that interacted with the African peasant villagers they attacked.5 Among African communities, a clear distinction is made between inter-tribal conflicts and the violence that erupted with the 2003 attack. Local community leaders use the term grand conflict to refer to the post-2003 violence.6 Darfur’s African peasant communities were, indeed, victims of government-backed militias, but the majority of Arabs did not participate in them. The Darfur grand conflict eventually grew to have regional and international dimensions, drawing in the African Union, Chad, Egypt, and Libya as well as the United Nations, United States, and the United Kingdom, among many other international actors.7 3. The terms passage corridors and routes are well known, in Arabic masarat or mraheel, and are specifically used with reference to the physical space reserved according to custom for pastoralists’ passage through farms and farming communities. 4. Tighani Mustafa, Inter-tribal Conflict in Darfur: Causes, Consequences and Cures (in Arabic) (Khartoum, Sudan Currency Printing Corporation, n.d.), 98. 5. Interview, Salah El Dein Mohamed El Fadl, a top Fur leader with the title magdoum and a member of the South Darfur Regional Assembly, al-Sahafa, 2 April 2008; interview, Abdel Rahman Abdel Alla, an informed source, Nyala, July 2006. 6. This distinction was made in most interviews, including those with Abdel Gadir Adam, a Messeriya omda of Niteiga, east of Nyala, Nyala, July 2006, and with Shartai Yagoub, a Fur shartai of Tor Kalomie, Zalengie, July 2006. The terms shartai and omda refer to mid-level local leadership positions; they are of equal rank, but different tribes use different names for them. 7. A. de Waal, ‘Prospects for peace in Darfur: A challenge to the African Union’ in Said Adejumobi and Adebayo Olukushi (eds.), The African Union and New Strategies for Development in Africa (Dakar, CODESRIA and Development Policy Management Forum, 2009), 287–99; Mahmoud Abu El Ayneen, ‘The role of the US in the Darfur cisis’ (in Arabic) in H. Mekki and E. Fleifel (eds.), Darfur Problem: Origins and Positions. Scenarios for Resolution and Intervention (Cairo, Institute for African Research and Studies, Cairo University, 2005); K. Salih, ‘The internationalization of communal conflict in Darfur and its regional and domestic ramifications, 2001–2007’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 30:3 (2008), www.thefreelibrary.com/The+ internationalization+of+the+communal+conflict+in+Darfur+and+its...-a0189598585.