Darfur Allegory

The Darfur conflict exploded in early 2003 when two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, struck national military installations in Darfur to send a hard-hitting message of resentment over the regions political and economic marginalization. The conflict devastated the regions economy, shredded its fragile social fabric, and drove millions of people from their homes. Darfur Allegory is a dispatch from the humanitarian crisis that explains the historical and ethnographic background to competing narratives that have informed international responses. At the heart of the book is Sudanese anthropologist Rogaia Abusharafs critique of the pseudoscientific notions of race and ethnicity that posit divisions between Arab northerners and African Darfuris. Elaborated in colonial times and enshrined in policy afterwards, such binary categories have been adopted by the media to explain the civil war in Darfur. The narratives that circulate internationally are thus highly fraught and cover overto counterproductive effectforms of Darfurian activism that have emerged in the conflicts wake. Darfur Allegory marries the analytical precision of a committed anthropologist with an insiders view of Sudanese politics at home and in the diaspora, laying bare the power of words to heal or perpetuate civil conflict.