Forgotten Darfur: Old Tactics and New Players

Although the international community generally holds that the Darfur conflict has experienced profound and propitious improvement, this report thus argues that, as the conflict enters its ninth year, there is no clear-cut prospect of a decisive end to violent confrontation. Its key findings include the following: • Since late 2010, new non-Arab ‘Popular Defence Forces’ have been recruited, trained, and armed by the Sudanese government to push Zaghawa rebel groups and civilian communities out of a wide swathe of eastern Darfur. About 70,000, mostly Zaghawa, individuals had been displaced by mid-2011, leading to a sequence of retaliatory attacks from both sides during mid-2011 and early 2012.

This report was originally published by the Small Arms Survey.