A Revival of Tribal Tradition to Help Repair Darfur

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 5, 2008; A08

EL DAIEN, Sudan In the heart of Arab Darfur recently, a who's who of tribal leaders lounged under tents in the sand -- sheiks and sultans, umdas and elders, intellectuals, businessmen and spiritual gurus. In the dry afternoon heat, the men discussed politics and the conflict in this western region of Sudan. There was dancing and a brass band to herald the dignitaries' entrances and exits.

A dutiful attendant fanned one of the gurus.

But the gathering -- a revival of a traditional festival that brought such leaders together to solve problems -- was hardly as grand as it used to be, back when tribal authorities governed Darfur. Instead of high-profile guests such as King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, the modern-day version scored only a second-tier U.N. official. Instead of 40 days of revelry, there were three.

"When my father was nazir, they used to have it every year," lamented festival host Said Mahmoud Musa Madibbo, the current nazir, or supreme leader, of the Arab Rizeigat tribe. "Now, security matters and the financial situation make it quite difficult."

The glory days of Darfur's traditional leaders have been in decline for decades, with government institutions usurping tribal authorities and five years of conflict further undermining this region's old social order, leaving a vacuum for other forces to fill.

Darfur has been rearranged by the Arab-led government's campaign against ethnic African villagers and rebels, and by the more recent fragmentation of society into dozens of rebel and militia factions. Experts estimate that 450,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been displaced.

On the Arab side, the Arab-dominated government has doled out cash to minor sheiks who became unduly powerful by recruiting the notorious Janjaweed militias to wage its war. On the African side, traditional leadership is being replaced by a host of rebel commanders.

Across the region, a culture of banditry is taking hold, with young, jobless men following the counsel of the AK-47.

As foreign diplomacy fails to resolve the Darfur conflict, some Sudanese academics and activists are advocating a return to the cast-off tribal potentates to help repair this riven society. Thus the three-day festival was revived -- a kind of soul-searching pep rally aimed, organizers said, at reawakening a sense of purpose among the beleaguered leaders.

"Everyone has tried to suppress them, and now they've almost become incompetent," said the nazir's nephew, Walid Madibbo, the main organizer of the festival. "But these are people who could win the trust of their community. If they connect with the masses, I think they could easily connect with their hearts."

The leaders who gathered, for only the second time in 40 years, wore their whitest white robes in this sleepy market town in southern Darfur -- the capital of the Rizeigat, Sudan's largest Arab tribe -- where donkey carts are still the most effective means of transport and cellphones with Mariah Carey ring tones are nearly as common.

They attended lectures on conflict resolution and the importance of culture in binding society together. They spent long afternoons talking easily over glasses of tea in the nazir's sandy compound. They prayed together at sunset. And later, they danced under the stars and shared shots of date liquor.

The leaders and other elites assembled -- prominent businessmen, professors, a couple of newspaper editors -- said they saw through the Sudanese government's attempt to use Arab nationalism as a way to rally the Janjaweed militias against ethnic African Darfurians.

"The problem is between Darfurians and the government -- this is not between Arabs and Africans," said Abdel Majid Ibrahim Mohamed, a prominent leader of the ethnically African Fur tribe, among the most heavily targeted by the government. "It's the government that is cooking these things up. I don't believe in this Arab and non-Arab description. There are Fur married to Arabs, so there's a social interlocking between them."

"This is not a tribal conflict or ethnic conflict," the nazir concurred. "It's a conflict of interests. And we've been living together for 400 years."

Since the Darfur conflict erupted, however, such views have rarely been expressed publicly by traditional Arab leaders, some of whom blame themselves for being sidelined. Some said they believed they would be arrested or killed if they spoke out against a government that expected Arab backing. Others were co-opted. Others were perhaps convinced that they were powerless.

"They have got many pressures from the government, " said Hassan Maki Ahmed, a teacher, referring to the Arab leaders. "They feel sorry for what happened, but they feel if they say something, nobody can hear them. People say these leaders are very weak. They can't give them what they want, and the government can."

The nazir was one of the few who refused to heed the government's call for militias, while some of his fellow Rizeigat leaders in the north got rich making a different choice.

"Everyone has his own situation and his own people to deal with," the elder Madibbo said, explaining the challenges of being a modern-day nazir with little ability to satisfy constituents.

In his father's day, for instance, traditional leaders had the power to tax. The nazir collected food from locals, kept it in a little house on the compound and distributed it to the needy during difficult times. These days, the little house is empty. Madibbo spends most of his time settling minor land disputes. And despite his edict, many young Rizeigat men from his area joined the government militias.

"Citizens these days are different than they used to be -- they are more worldly," he sighed.

Still, the home town of the nazir suggests what would be possible if leaders like him prevailed in Darfur.

On the edge of El Daien, for instance, there is a camp of displaced ethnic African villagers, people who said they fled there because they felt the town was safe. The nazir gave them land for the settlement.

And milling around the nazir's compound were other Arab leaders who defied the government line. There was an officer of a major opposition party, along with a few young Rizeigat men who had joined a Darfur rebel group. There was the deputy nazir, who is a member of the Southern People's Liberation Movement, which fought a 20-year civil war against the government.

They sat together around plastic tables and feasted on communal plates of roasted lamb and goat. The brass band struck up the traditional music once again, as a festive air began to take hold.

On the next-to-last day of the gathering, an official from the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission to Sudan, which is trying to help mediate an end to the conflict, swooped in for an hour.

"We've been promoting the use of traditional methods to solve conflicts," said Henry Anyidoho, the deputy political head of mission. "You see all over Africa, where that system is broken, you have problems. Where that system is in place, you have no problems."

On the final day, organizers arranged a rip-roaring horse race on the edge of town, with the hope of rebuilding a connection between the public and the tribal leaders.

As the sun went down, the leaders sat under a red tarp along the straight, sandy track. On the other side, perhaps 8,000 people showed up -- farmers and herders, merchants, young men and others who lined up along the white metal railing. Several spectators said they had not come to honor the leaders but to enjoy a good race, which soon got underway.

The main event pitted an unknown horse from the countryside against two Thoroughbreds belonging to the nazir's family. In a cloud of red dust and to the wild cheers of the crowd, the unknown horse won.