When discussing the genocide in Southern Sudan many Westerns have a hard time figuring out the roots of this issue. Why are black people killing black people, is a fundamental question asked? But the very question shows the misunderstanding of the issues by the questioner.
Bosnian Muslims and Serbia
Bosnian Muslims are of course believers in Islam while ethnic Serbs are Christians. This is not a discussion of that particular war but the genocide inflicted on the Bosnians was in retaliation for an age old religious and ethnic intolerance. As stated by the United Human Rights Council: “As the Serbs gained ground, they began to systematically roundup local Muslims…including mass shootings, forced repopulation of entire towns, and confinement….The actions of the Serbs were labeled as 'ethnic cleansing’.” The Serbs also set up rape pregnancy camps where “those of childbearing age are raped until they become pregnant,” according to Carolyn Boyd who serves as field consultant for the Women's Solidarity Fund of the World Council of Churches.
Yet all this happened to and by people who were neighbors living side by side for years. Angela Robson wrote in a June 1993 report Rape: weapon of war, “For 28-year-old Senka, the horror began late one night…‘Two of the Chetniks…had intercourse with me….I recognized two of the Chetniks as my former neighbors from Gorazde’.”
Black or African
Black, Negro, Colored-People, African-American, Slave, or African are all Western terms used to describe people of color having ancestral heritage from the African continent. In most cases it simply describes people of dark color (non Latino or Asian) whose features resemble those from the continent, regardless of heritage. While a perfectly acceptable connotation it does little to help understand the conflict in this region.
Arab
In Africa, Arab is an ethnicity and not a nationality. In the article Middle East Sunni and Shia Muslims it explains about the difference between Islamic sects: a difference that traverses national boarders. The West has incorrectly identified the word Arab with the Middle East and indirectly with Islam. This is a fundamental mistake and is institutional in many misunderstandings.
Many of the Arab countries are nowhere near the Middle East. Morocco (an “Arabic” country) is located 5 degrees west longitude, Saudi Arabia (the religious center of the Islamic world) is 45 degrees east with England at 2 degrees west and France 2 degrees east longitude. Even Recife Brazil in South America is 35 degrees West or 1,080 miles closer* to Morocco than Morocco is to Saudi Arabia.
Countries from Turkey in Europe, to Egypt in Africa still identify themselves as Arabic nations. Lebanon on the Eastern Mediterranean and Afghanistan in Central Asia all identify with Arabic culture. On the other hand a nation located in the center of the Middle East, like Farsi speaking Iran, does not call itself Arabic but Persian.
Sudan and Darfur
In Africa it is similar. Northern Arabs, including Northern Sudan, identify with Islam, the Arabic and Bedouin philosophy. Southern Sudanese align with other non Arab nations in both ideology and religion. As told by Makau Mutua in the July 14, 2004 edition of The Christian Science Monitor: ”The blacks in the south either hew to their ancestral traditional African religions or have converted to Christianity.” Durfar is the exact opposite of the genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian Christians. Sudanese Muslims, the Janjaweed, are perpetrating genocide on African traditionalists and Christians.
Understanding
Misunderstandings have caused many conflicts, whether on an individual basis or national scene as in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. An example of the misunderstanding by the West is in the name given the body of water between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The "Persian" Gulf (as called by the West) is an insult to most Arabic nations who live on the Arabian Gulf and are not Persians and the "Arab" Gulf insults Iranians. The simple phrase implies ownership and has caused conflicts.
Black Arabs in Sudan have more in common with their Asian Brothers in Indonesia than their neighbors to the south. Black Africans in Sudan have more in common with their white brothers in Europe and North America than with their neighbors to the north. What the West needs to understand is that the color of the skin has absolutely nothing to do with the conflict in Darfur.
* based on 40 degrees North latitude
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