ABSTRACT
As late as 2007, it was possible to lament the “unseen regional implications of the Darfur conflict.”1 Indeed, early analysis tended to overlook the regional character and sources of the escalating violence in Darfur.2 The conflict was instead understood in terms of factors internal to Sudan, particularly violent resource competition between “African farmers” and “Arab nomads,” and the aggravation of these conflicts through successive waves of drought and desertification, all compounded by Darfur’s marginal position within Sudan. Recently, however, analyses of the conflict, responding to the emergence of a regional crisis centered on the border between Chad, Sudan, and the Central African Republic (CAR), have stressed its regional dimensions.3 These local, national, and regional emphases are not necessarily incompatible, a fact often overlooked in debates over the war’s contested causes. As I demonstrate below, politics in the wider region have interacted with local conflicts and contributed to patterns of neglect, exploitation, and repression of peripheral regions such as Darfur by successive Sudanese governments.
