ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the issues around civil militia and state violence in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. It analyses the mysteries surrounding the emergence and violent activities of the Janjaweed militia, an outfit believed to be armed by the Sudanese government in its effort to fight rebellion in the region. The chapter also examines the materialist and power relation dimensions of heterogeneity, civil war and instability in Sudan. It describes the phenomenon of civil militias as one of several manifestations of Sudan's instability. The chapter focuses on the origin of conflict in Darfur, the main theatre of the conflict; the western rebellion and its aftermaths, the main causal epicentre of the rise of the Janjaweed militia; state complicity in the arming of and provision of legal impunity to the Janjaweed to commit ethnically-motivated violence against non-Arabs; and the structure, composition and operations of Janjaweed to determine a counter insurgency unit of the Sudanese army or an ethnic militia.
