Social Science Research Council

Claims that the war in Darfur is intimately linked to vast untapped oil reserves have been made ever since the conflict began and are revived in The Scramble for Africa, where Steven Fake and Kevin Funk repeat a series of assertions that, as far as is known in the often secretive world of oil exploration, [...]

Sherif Idriss Izhaq, the political officer of the SLA in Ain Siro, has been murdered. The motive of his killing, shortly after the first visit to Ain Siro by members of the Mbeki Panel last month, is not yet clear, but SLA officials in Ain Siro are examining the possibility that there could be [...]

The Sudan government and the Justice and Equality Movement are meeting in Doha, and the US envoy for Sudan, Scott Gration, is doing the rounds of the usual suspects in Khartoum, meeting Ali Osman and Salva Kiir, Nafie Ali Nafie, Minni Minawi etc… But where in all this traffic are Darfur’s Arabs? Gration made [...]

Abd al-Wahab Abdalla (25 March) says “The worst massacre of the last 12 months was by JEM! It killed 128 Meidob over 2 days.”
There have been a number of allusions on this blog to the unrest at JEM’s base in eastern Chad on January 1 this year, but hard facts and clearly identified sources are [...]

The expulsions of humanitarians are a catastrophe for the victims of the Darfur war, a fact upon which Luis Moreno Ocampo might well reflect given the requirement of the Rome Statute that prosecutions be in the interests of victims. If he wanted to indict President Bashir–a reversal, by the way, of his initial thinking–why [...]

I came across SPLA-2 while in the Nuba Mountains in April. Al Bulola had just been visiting senior SPLA commanders, in South Sudan and in South Kodofan, claiming that he had 40,000 men ready to join the movement and looking for logistical support. The SPLA’s high military command in Juba had never heard [...]

After working on Darfur since 2002, it was sobering to revisit the Nuba Mountains in April. My last visit, for the arba’iin of Commander Yousif Kuwa in May 2001, was cut short when eight government columns attacked the village where the mourning ceremony was being held. Yousif Kuwa’s successor, Abdel Aziz al Hilu, succeeded [...]

In the debate over the ICC, and the indictments the Chief Prosecutor has promised for this month, my concerns are primarily factual: the depiction of the present conflict by Luis Moreno Ocampo, and the fears of many, including some of the best-informed and most experienced international jurists, that he risks damaging his case and the [...]

In the wake of JEM’s attack on Omdurman, a number of correspondents have urged closer, critical examination of the rebel movements. This is long overdue. In the last few weeks, the “movements”—more often than not, shifting collections of commanders rather than organised groups with clear platforms and principles—have continued to give proof that [...]

Picking up Alex’s question about the calculations of the JEM leadership, I believe this was a serious attempt at regime change—however over-ambitious or foolhardy it may now seem. JEM has said openly ever since it refused to sign the DPA that it has a new policy and that policy is regime change. In [...]