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Challenges
of Providing Anthropological Expertise Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban The complexities of racial, cultural and religious diversity in Sudan are obscured by simplistic media stereotypes of Sudanese “Arabs” attacking or carrying out ethnic cleansing against “blacks” when these racial designations are defined by politicians and journalists from outside Sudan. By American standards all Sudanese would be considered black and all Sudanese, irrespective of their regional origin, experience racism when they seek asylum or study in the US, although, ironically, few are profiled phenotypically as Arab. Indeed al-Sudan, or the land of the blacks, was the name given by the Arabs to Saharan African Muslims. Diversity
in Sudan In the current conflict in Darfur, Arab identity has been more imposed by external media and politicians than is reflective of the complex realities on the ground. The almost daily reports about Darfur emanating from the print and radio media, such as NPR or the BBC, repeat and reinforce the nature of the conflict as being one of Arab aggressors preying upon black Africans. In one recent report on NPR’s Morning Edition on August 31, the reporter mentioned Arabs, Arab nomads, Arab herdsmen and Arab Janjaweed (men on camel or horseback) attacking the blacks, black farmers and all blacks more than a dozen times in a three minute report. As a speaker of Sudanese colloquial Arabic, I listened closely to the dialogue broadcast between the Western reporter and Juma, a Darfur farmer whose family had suffered from the undeniable aggression taking place in the region. The translation repeated the black and Arab references. I did not hear, however, either of these words uttered in the Arabic dialogue transmitted, presumably for purposes of authenticity. I could not help but wonder how much of the reported dialogue was the words of the reporter and how much the actual words of the interviewee.
Like other African contexts, national identity is weak in the periphery and most Sudanese identify themselves by ethnic group, or by region, such as southerner or Darfuri. The northern, so-called Arabs have been the country’s ruling elite since independence in 1956 and are often referred to as Arabized Nubians—Arabic-speaking people of the northern Ja`aleen, Shayqiya and Danagla ethnic groups whom the British favored during five decades of colonial rule, and who have dominated Sudanese political, economic and social life ever since. This northern ethnic domination has a strong racial component comprised of powerful, endogamous families of notables who have been slavers and economic exploiters of peoples and lands outside of their northern riverain base. The people of the Sudan are certainly African in the continental sense, but they can also include people of southwest Asian and European origins. Ideas of being Arab are confounding, as this term has been associated with political Arab nationalism in the 20th century, such as the Arab Republic that united Egypt and Syria in the 1960s and 70s, or with the Ba`athism of Iraq and Syria. Today Arab may be used in the “war on terrorism” as a gloss for Muslim extremism. The precise meaning of Arab in Arabic is “nomad” or Bedouin. In this sense the Janjaweed militias preying upon the Darfur people are more Arab, that is, nomadic, than their Khartoum backers. Some Sudanese writers have employed the term Afro-Arab for northern Sudanese and a variety of Nilotic (Nile origin) people in the south, but this term was rejected by southern politicians and was jettisoned from political discourse in Arabic as well as English. The word that offends in Sudanese Arabic is `abd or slave, referencing darker-skinned ethnic groups that were enslaved historically, which, again ironically, might be used in the Arabian Gulf regions against the very Arabs who are heading the present government. The issue of race and racism has moved closer to the center of Sudanese politics in the years of protracted civil war since 1983 with questions of national identity still unresolved. Northern intellectuals are self-critically examining their purported Arab pedigrees, while some Southern intellectuals, such as Francis Deng, are asserting the hybrid blend of race and culture that comprises the Sudanese people. Role of
Anthropology Many in the 23-year-old Sudan Studies Association (SSA), whose current president `Ali Dinar is from Darfur, are attempting to affect public discourses about the conflict. A Darfur Task Force was initiated by UCLA anthropologist Sondra Hale at this year’s SSA annual meeting. This task force has drafted resolutions calling for consideration of the complexities mentioned here and advocating an African solution lead by the African Union, while individual members have made themselves available to the press and the electronic media. Members of the task force are often keen to separate their desire for clarification of the cultural, linguistic and political issues from apology or support for the Sudanese regime. Others have offered their services as expert witnesses in US political asylum cases where their testimony can have a decisive effect on a Sudanese exile seeking asylum. Despite these concrete efforts, a basic frustration prevails, one that is familiar to anthropologists working in other conflict zones where complex human relations are rendered in simplistic ways. There is still a great deal of room for anthropology in bringing local understandings and realities into mainstream media and policymaking discourses. If we are successful in doing so, we might all be more successful in addressing real, albeit complex, underlying social roots to conflicts. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban is chair-elect of the AAA Committee for Ethics and founder and twice past-president of the Sudan Studies Association. She is currently involved with the Sudan Studies Association’s Darfur Task Force. |
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