In the depths of Darfur, where the land stretches endlessly towards the horizon and justice fades like the sun behind the dunes, a new tragedy is being written – in the color of blood.
The Zaghawa – long a symbol of resistance and pride in identity – now find themselves at the heart of a war unlike their past struggles for survival: a war waged in their name, yet fought at their expense.
Between the calculations of generals in Khartoum and the schemes of Islamists returning from the shadows, the blood of the Zaghawa – one of Sudan’s largest African tribes – has become a political currency with which loyalties are bought and stances sold.
The history of the Zaghawa in Sudan is no forgotten chapter in the record of civil wars; it is a mirror reflecting decades of discrimination and exclusion.
Since the rise of Omar al-Bashir’s Salvation Regime in 1989, the state turned its weaponry against those it deemed “foreigners” in their own homeland.
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Zaghawa areas were besieged by starvation; their people were branded as rebels while the state media machinery painted them as a threat to national identity.
The killing was not random – it was systematic, cloaked in religious rhetoric that justified extermination in the name of “defending Islam.”
One survivor, speaking by phone from Abéché, Chad, recalled: “They told us, ‘You are not Muslims like us. Your language and dialect are alien to Sudan’s Arabism.’ It was all a prelude to killing us slowly.”
International reports, including those by Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, documented the crimes committed against the Zaghawa in the early 2000s – entire villages burned, tens of thousands displaced to Chad – signed by the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime.
Yet the wound never healed. It turned into an open scar, later exploited to recycle hatred and revenge.
After al-Bashir’s fall in 2019, Sudanese citizens thought the era of sectarian exploitation had ended. But the war that erupted in April 2023 reshuffled the deck. The Sudanese army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, forged an opportunistic alliance with Islamist figures seeking to regain influence and tribal support in the devastated west.
Amid this landscape emerged the name of Jibril Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan’s current Minister of Finance – a son of the Zaghawa himself.
Jibril, who had fought the previous regime for decades, now finds himself on the opposite bank of history, allied with the army and hardline Islamists.
His official rhetoric speaks of “protecting civilians,” yet on the ground, his battles have become a hemorrhage within his own tribe.
Thousands of Zaghawa youth have joined the fighting within various militias aligned with the army – spurred by leaders like Jibril Ibrahim, who received lucrative rewards in positions and funds. But the young men he sends to war do not return.
As one enraged elder put it: “Jibril distributes posts to his close circle and leaves our sons on the frontlines. We are being used as human shields in a battle whose purpose we do not understand.”
In his ministry – supposedly devoted to improving Sudanese livelihoods – Jibril has wielded money as a political weapon, buying loyalties and deepening tribal rifts.
Through the Ministry of Finance, vast financial facilities are reportedly funneled to the Justice and Equality Movement in exchange for its military support and recruitment of impoverished Zaghawa youth, sent into the inferno of war.
Meanwhile, the economic situation in Zaghawa areas continues to collapse.
The Sudanese pound has lost more than half its value in a single year, and villages once known for their grain now survive on aid.
Darfurian activist Rahma Idris
observes: “They talk about development and justice, while Zaghawa children have no schools or hospitals. The war has turned the tribe into an economic project for those who hold power and weapons.”
What unfolds within the Zaghawa community is no spontaneous discord – it is a deliberate strategy to dismantle any potential political or social unity that might threaten the center of power in Khartoum.
As political analyst Mohamed Nour al-Din explains: “The Islamists know the Zaghawa have a legacy of organization and rebellion, so they aim to keep them in perpetual conflict with themselves.”
He adds: “When the tribe is divided, it becomes easier to control. The army provides the weapons, the Islamists supply the ideological cover – and Darfur pays the price.”
Today, as United Nations reports estimate more than 150,000 dead and 15 million displaced in Sudan’s ongoing war, the Zaghawa remain a tragic subtext to a greater catastrophe.
They have been victims across eras – killed under Bashir in the name of Islam, and now drained in its name once more.
Between these two slogans, a new generation of the tribe’s youth is lost – caught in the spiral of poverty and coerced allegiance.
Perhaps the war in Sudan is no longer a mere struggle for power, but a battle for the very soul of the nation.
And when tribes are exploited to uphold transient regimes, blood ceases to be spilled in vain – it becomes the mortar of false edifices built upon ruin.