Welcome to the Once CA Podcast. Today, we have Abubakr Elnoor, PhD, who discusses life in Darfur, the conflict there, and his research into the driving forces for violent extremism and terrorist recruitment.
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Transcript:
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If the terrorist organizations are very successful in remote areas...
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Hi and welcome to the 1CA podcast. My name is John McElligot, your host for today's episode. We're joined today by Dr. Abu Bakr al -Noor, who is a cultural conflict sociologist. He received a degree from Nova Southeastern University Department of Conflict Studies, and he's been currently working with refugees and assisting with the Valkomir team. We had previously interviewed James Pastor Christian and Dr. Alex Nesich. So they have an extensive team of experts, all of whom have advanced degrees and come from other countries. Dr. Elnor, thank you very much for being on the 1CA podcast.
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Thank you for having me, John. I really appreciate this opportunity.
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Absolutely. We're glad that you're here. And, sir, I wanted to go a little bit into your background so that listeners can understand where you're coming from, conflict that you have lived through, and how that led to where you are today. You and your family come from, how do you pronounce it? Is it Zakawa? People of western Sudan and Chad? From Darfur,
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northern Darfur in Sudan. So the northern Darfur region is predominantly inhabited by the Zakawa tribe and also the four tribes in some part of it.
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Okay. Could you tell people what most families do in that group? What's a typical family like, and what do people do to make a living? What they do for a living is they are pastoralists in nature,
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a living is they are pastoralists in nature, and also they do some farming. But the thing that they are not willing to do or they don't want to do is joining the military.
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So cattle and camels for sale? Is that you take the cattle and camels to market for sale? Well, the first purpose of having these animals is like social status.
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of having these animals is like social status. That's the number one thing. And number two, you know, like if you need anything, then you take one, two or three or, you know, as many as you want to take them to the market and then you sell them and then you buy your... your needs. Mostly they have them for social status. So the more animal you have, the higher status that is.
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Oh, I understand. So how many head of cattle or camels would a typical family have?
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Some people have like 400 heads. Some people like 300 heads. And some of them is like just 50 to 100 heads of animals. Especially like camels.
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Wow, so it's a huge area, land area, so there must be just cattle everywhere grazing. Is it a fertile area? Is there any grasslands? How do people get by with access to water and food for the cattle? It's a desert,
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pretty much. So that's why, you know, raising camels in that area, that's the ideal place to raise camels. Right. And also, you know, like the Zagawa,
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and then east of Chad and then the northern part of Sudan. So that is the expansion of the Sahara Desert.
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Yes, by nature they are nomadic. So even though sometimes they leave, you know, like you have a family, you leave your family and then you take your animals and then you go, you know, just roaming. grazing lands for your animals, and so on and so forth. So they are nomadic by nature.
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Okay. Dr. O 'Nour, you mentioned that people there would not want to join the military. Why is that the case? Well, because the Zahawa tribe...
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And they don't want to join the military because part of it also, the Sudanese military, you know, like officers in the Sudanese militaries, like they are from same tribes from the north.
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from the north. So whenever people from that region want to join the military, you just, you know, like just being like enlisted. Okay. Right. Not more of the officers. So that's why. They don't want to join the military. Working for someone. I think that's understandable.
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You should have that right to compete with others.
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Sure. And they're not on equal footing. They cannot compete for positions as officers like people from other tribes can, it sounds like.
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Yeah, that's the number two reason for not having or not wanting to join the military.
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Okay. Understood. Yeah. Sir, before you earned a degree from Nova Southeastern University, this was the Department of Conflict Studies, you had lived through conflict and experienced trauma yourself. And I wondered if you could talk to the listeners about what the Darfur conflict, the Civil War, was about and how that impacted your family because that was a watershed occurrence. That changed the trajectory of your life. I think they heard about this conflict at a distance. There were many celebrities who tried to shed light on what happened in Darfur, what continues to happen in their area. But could you talk to folks about what was the Darfur Civil War about? When did this begin? And how did it impact you?
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Well, first of all, the Darfur conflict, like the real conflict,
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You know, like we had a lot of, you know, back and forth and some sort of conflict, but not manifested as the way it is right now, or at least the way it was in 2003. But let me give you a little bit of a...
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The name Darfur, Dar in Arabic, is the home. And then four is the tribe. So pretty much the name Darfur means the home of the four tribes. So the four tribes is the number one tribe in Darfur. That's why they took the name. And then there's the Zahawa tribe, and then the Masali tribe, kind of like number three. And of course, there are other tribes, those who consider themselves. They are nomads, so they are roaming from one place to another. Prior to the Kingdom of the Four, there was a kingdom called the Tajo Kingdom, and that ruled the region from 1100 to 1480. It's about 380 years. And then after this kingdom came another kingdom called the Twindu Kingdom, and that also...
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And then the four kingdoms came, and the four kingdoms started from 1640 until 1916, about 276 years.
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And then after that, you know, like the...
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what they called the council of state the sovereignty kinds of council and that also started 1956 right after the independent for two years until 1958 and then after that um there was a general called ibrahim abud took over through a coup detail or the military coup that and he ruled from 1958 until 1956 so about
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it's about also four years and then another military coup took place by one of the general generals called Ann Mary and that was in 1969 until 1985 and then followed by a transition which is something a lot of people say that that was a military coup by Suara Dhab and that lasted for one year from 1985 until
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And then another elected government of Prime Minister Sadik al -Mahdi, and that from 1986 until 1989. And that government lasted only about three years. And then al -Gashir, who is the current Sudanese president,
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came through a military coup in 1998. And it's been like, it's been 30 years since. So this is kind of like an overall history or a background,
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a brief background about the Darfur.
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Even under al -Bashir in the last 30 years, I guess that's been the most consistent leadership, I suppose. A series of tumultuous times since the kingdoms had folded into the modern -day nation -state of Sudan. That's what happened exactly.
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We had like three elected, so to speak, three elected governments. It only lasted for like 10 years in total. So that's the problem. a little bit of his purple background you know like since independence we had pretty much five major conflicts
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conflict between Muslims and Christians. But so to speak, a lot of people say it's a struggle, it's a power struggle. But people have their own opinions. They may agree or disagree, but mostly about power. And also there was like, was still going on the Nuba Mountain conflict in the West and the Blue Nile conflict also in the West -South and the Pija conflict also that was in the East.
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or the middle of Sudan, not having a lot of policy makers from the region, from Darfur. So that's why people view political causes or political, but through marginalization of the region, that's like one of the drivers that contributed to the Darfur conflict. So we feel that, yeah, the Darfur people feel that we're not sharing. Right, I can see why. Yeah, that was the number one driver for the comfort.
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Also the inequality, people view Darfur are not equal as people from the north. Whether it's true or not, a lot of people view it that way. You know, inequality in education, in healthcare, and a lot of things that people perceive themselves as not being equal to their peers. And also in Darfur, As I mentioned before, there are some Arab tribes, at least those who identify themselves with the Arabs. So the government armed those tribes, gave them some weapons. So also that's one of the major drives for the Danforth conflict.
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Okay. Dictatorship, corruptions, and also we have the politicization of the religion, Islam in particular. Right. People are just trying to use that religion as a vehicle, trying to achieve some sort of gains through mobilizing people, you know, like, we are this, we are this people, we are...
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people and so on and so forth. Also there are some sort of external influences like the Arab League or at least some Arab countries helped or at least helped the Sudanese government in some way or another as having the Sudanese government identifying itself as being an Arab elite.
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like the Arab League or at least some Arab countries helped or at least helped the Sudanese government in some way or another as having the Sudanese government identifying itself as being an Arab elite. So the current government had a lot of support from the Arab League and some countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and some Muslim countries like Turkey and so on and so forth. So that is the political part that sparked WIDA for conflict. Other people think that there are other environmental issues also, the scarcity in resources, and that has led to conflict between herders and farmers,
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the pastoralists and the farmers. That's probably always been there, though. If there are nomadic peoples competing for resources for feeding families and growing crops and feeding livestock, I would think that in that region, over hundreds of years, those conflicts, have they always been there, though?
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It's been there for so many years. And as you mentioned, due to the scarcity of resources, you see the competition.
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on these lands and those who own the farms they want to you know benefit from the crop the crops that they grow so you see a constant conflict between these two uh two groups okay so that's that's one also yeah and also there are other cultural cultural facts or drivers that contributed to the therefore conflict and the notion of identity who are you know like some people identify
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that contributed to the therefore conflict and the notion of identity who are you know like some people identify identify themselves as being Africans. So that is a huge struggle in the Darfur region.
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Right.
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And also, yeah, and there are also ethnic tensions between Arabs and non -Arab tribes and between, you know, like even within one group, like the Arabs themselves and African tribes themselves. So also that is huge. And the last thing that I want to add to this one is like, Even though that is, it looks like political, so the government enforced the idea of acculturation. I call it forced acculturation. So you have to adapt, you know, the Arab culture, whether you like it or not. So that's the identity issue, you know, like they force you to embrace other cultures that you don't like it or at least that is not yours. So these are the...
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It started in 2003. Continues today? It still continues. Not as it was in 2003 or 2004, but it's still not completely settled down. So I would consider it's still going on.
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would consider it's still going on.
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Folks, you've been listening to an interview with Dr. Abu Bakr al -Noor. We're talking about the Darfur conflict. When we come back, I'll ask Dr. al -Noor about the research he's been doing on the underlying psychological drivers of violent extremism. in some Muslim communities.
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Thanks for listen