ABSTRACT
The framework of complementary conflicts introduced in Chapter 2 highlights the way communal conflicts, local elite conflicts, center– periphery conflicts and cross border conflicts interact, each bringing its own internal dynamics and impact to a conflict. Chapters 3–6 apply these four types to the Darfur crisis. In this chapter, we will explore communal conflicts, which include a conflict parties non-state groups that are organized along a shared communal identity. This identity forges various attachments among its members, and it accentuates the feeling that its members are fundamentally different from outside groups they view as threats. In the Darfur crisis, the parties identify themselves with several categories of collective identity—ethnicity, livelihood, and culture. As popularized by the international media, many world leaders, and some parties of the Darfur crisis themselves, most believe that the communal conflicts arise from African farmers pitted against Arab herders. However, this chapter will demonstrate that such an interpretation grossly oversimplifies the crisis.
