Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror

By: Mahmood Mamdani

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Synopsis: Those who insist on seeing the horrific violence in Darfur as a conflict between "Arabs" and "Africans" and as a genocide are failing to look at the historical and political context of the violence and are serving to delay political reconciliation with their calls for military intervention and their emphasis on retributive justice. So argues Mamdani (anthropology and politics, Columbia U. ), who urges us to rethink key assumptions about traditions, race, tribe, and locality in Darfur in order to better understand the conflict and how to move towards political reconciliation and peace. He sets his discussion of these issues within the context of colonial and nationalist historiographies of Sudan and Darfur, seeking to debunk the simplistic understanding of the violence as a conflict between Arab settler rulers and African natives. He argues instead that the violence should be seen as product of a land tenure system that set different tribes interests' against one another, sometimes along an Arab/non-Arab axis and sometimes along an Arab/Arab axis. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)