War in Darfur

The war in Darfur, in western Sudan, began in February 2003 when rebels drawn mainly from the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit peoples took up arms against a government they accused of neglecting and oppressing Darfur's non-Arab population. The government's response, waged largely through allied militias known as the Janjaweed, brought mass killing, rape and the destruction of villages. The United Nations estimated that around 300,000 people died, mostly from disease and hunger, and that close to 3 million were displaced; the Sudanese government put the toll at about 10,000. The United States government described the violence as genocide, and the International Criminal Court later charged Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide. A peace agreement was signed in August 2020.

Darfur, whose name means "home of the Fur", was an independent sultanate for centuries before being absorbed into Egyptian-ruled Sudan in 1875; it passed to the Mahdist state in 1883 and was finally incorporated into Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1916. Explanations for the war stress different factors: competition for land and water between herders and farmers, the marginalisation of the region by the government in Khartoum, links with Sudan's long north–south civil wars, and growing tension between groups identifying as Arab and non-Arab.

The Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked government posts from 2002 and 2003. On 25 April 2003 rebels raided the airbase at El Fasher, destroying aircraft and killing or capturing over 100 soldiers and airmen, a humiliation for the army. With regular troops struggling and largely deployed elsewhere, the government relied on military intelligence, air power and the Janjaweed, drawn largely from Arabic-speaking Baggara herders. Although it denied backing them, evidence indicates that the government armed and paid these militias and coordinated attacks with them, many directed at civilians.

From 2003 to 2005 villages of the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit were burned, their inhabitants killed, raped or driven out. By March 2005 the UN estimated that about 2.7 million people had been displaced, and more than 100,000 refugees had fled into Chad. Death toll estimates vary widely: a 2010 study in The Lancet put excess deaths at between about 178,000 and 462,000, most from disease. In 2004 the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, on the evidence gathered by his department, the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed had committed genocide. An International Commission of Inquiry reporting to the UN Secretary-General found that government forces and militias had carried out indiscriminate attacks and killings of civilians, but concluded that the government had not pursued a policy of genocide. Comparisons with the Rwandan genocide were rejected by Khartoum.

A ceasefire brokered by Chad in April 2004 did not hold. The African Union sent monitors and troops, and in May 2006 the government signed the Darfur Peace Agreement with one rebel faction, while others rejected it. In July 2007 the UN Security Council approved a joint UN–African Union force, UNAMID, which replaced the African mission. Fighting, militia raids and clashes between communities continued for years, and talks with JEM in 2010 broke down.

In 2005 the Security Council referred Darfur to the International Criminal Court. The court issued warrants for a government minister, Ahmed Haroun, and the militia leader Ali Kushayb in 2007, and for al-Bashir in March 2009. After an appeal, it added three counts of genocide against him in July 2010. He was the first sitting head of state charged by the court, and he rejected the accusations. Kushayb was arrested in 2020 and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2025.

Al-Bashir was removed from power in April 2019 during the Sudanese revolution, and the transitional government made peace in Darfur a priority. On 31 August 2020, in Juba, it signed an agreement with several rebel groups, the date usually given as the end of the war, though violence in the region did not stop.

Our 2000 map shows Sudan on the eve of the conflict, and our 2010 map shows the country while the war continued.