In the arid lands that have seen one of the most brutal wars of the 21st century so far, green shoots of peace may finally be appearing. In the hot Darfur fields farmed by Adam Ali Mohammed, these green shoots are alternating rows of lentils and melons.
“We tried lentils before, but there was not enough water,” the farmer said.
Here in the Sahel, water is the key to life, but there is precious little of it — just 20cm of rain a year — and it is the source of much of the conflict.
Illustration: Lance Liu
The climate crisis is making marginal existences even more fragile. It is no future threat here, with the Sahara marching southwards, temperatures rising and precious annual rains becoming ever more erratic.
However, a new approach is bearing fruit. The seasonal river that runs by El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, has been transformed by community-built weirs. These slow the flow of the rainy season downpours, spreading water and allowing it to seep into the land.
Before, just 150 farmers could make a living here: now, 4,000 work the land by the Sail Gedaim weir.
Crucially, the weirs are not just promising a more bountiful future, but a more peaceful one. Communities of farmers and nomadic camel herders, deadly enemies during the war, are coming together to plan and build them. This has often meant meeting face to face for the first time since the conflict began in 2003, but recrimination has turned into cooperation over shared water, and even resulted in wedding invitations.
“There was a lot of killing here — there isn’t enough time to tell you about it all,” Sail Gedaim weir committee member Sheik Abdoelhman Saeed said. “But now we are planning among ourselves to reach new areas with weirs.”
Millet and sorghum were the staples, but Ali Mohammed has been able to expand into cucumbers and okra, lemons and grapefruit, and is trying sunflowers for the first time, all of which are valuable cash crops.
“You give me the seed, and I will test it,” he said.
Millions were forced to flee the violence in Darfur that killed as many as 400,000 people during a decade of conflict from 2003. Many people remain in huge camps today.
“But if the fields are green like now, nothing could force me to go anywhere else,” Ali Mohammed said.
The weir project on the Wadi El Ku river has also brought women, who do much of the farming work, to the fore.
“Before, I was not able to sit with these men, and to speak like this,” Azaz Mohammed said, as the dam committee from 22 villages meets, sitting on carpets in the shade of a tree and sharing a meal harvested from the surrounding fields.
The weirs are a “pioneer project,” ministry of production director-general in North Darfur Enaam Ismail Abdalla said, adding that the timing of the rains has completely changed due to climate change.
The weirs are enabling people to return to their villages and adapt to the changing climate, which would otherwise drive them away once again, she said. She said that she hopes they would be replicated in other parts of Darfur, Sudan and beyond.
The collaborative climate-proofing provided by the Wadi El Ku project shows a way to tackle the complex mix of climate impacts, conflict and migration that are thought to be rising around the world.
The Darfur conflict was labelled “the first climate change war” by some observers, with then-UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon saying in 2007: “Amid the diverse social and political causes, it began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.”
Research has shown that climate impacts such as drought and increasing temperatures increase the risk of armed struggles, particularly in regions where populations are already divided.
Bitter divisions are starting to dissolve 80km north of El Fasher along the Wadi El Ku, where the next phase of the project is taking place. Until very recently, project staff needed a convoy of dozens of heavily armed soldiers to visit.
“Now we can go on our own: That is a real sign of improvement,” said Atila Uras, head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Sudan, which oversees the 16 million euro EU-funded project, which is aiming to help 180,000 people.
In the semi-desert encampment of Mamora, the pastoralists are reluctant to talk about the war. However, after a traditional greeting meal of camel milk and goat meat inside an ornately decorated tent, Omer Ali Mohammed said: “For sure, during the conflict there was a breakdown of relations between the different communities.”
He is a former member of the Rapid Support Forces, a government paramilitary group that grew out of the Janjaweed militias used by the former Sudanese regime to fight rebels in Darfur. In April, a revolution deposed former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir after a 30-year rule. He is now in jail in Khartoum and faces genocide charges at the international criminal court in the Hague.
“The government fueled us to fight against each other, but we have realized we were being misused,” said another Mamora nomad, Mohammed Ahmed. “We got sick of the conflict. Now we want to live in peace. Our fathers and grandfathers used to live in peace.”
The Wadi El Ku project began work in this area in September with a six-day peace conference of seven pastoralist groups and 44 farming villages.
“At first, they were all very angry and shouted a lot. The farmers said these [pastoralists] have killed our people,” said Awadalla Hamid Mohamed of non-governmental organization Practical Action, which is implementing the UNEP project.
“But we gave them time and the tensions slowly reduced. It took two months,” said Hamid Mohamed, who managed to escape from Janjaweed kidnappers nearby in 2015, when working on the early part of the project.
“They realized coexisting was good for them,” he said.
The nomads need clear routes for their 1,000km migrations, which were being blocked by farms, while the farmers need milk, meat and safety for themselves and their crops. The nomads also said that they feel marginalized, with little access to medical care and deaths during childbirth common.
The key was enabling the communities to come to an agreement on how to share the water and land.
“There are layers and layers of conflict, so we started with what they could agree on, and everyone agrees there is a problem with the environment, with water by far the biggest priority,” Uras said. “But if you look like you are dictating things, that is a killer.”
The peace meeting led to a breakthrough: For the first time in years, the nomads invited farmers to a wedding in September. More than 800 people attended, including many young people who had never met, with some guests travelling from 40km away.
“It was an opportunity to rebuild the old relations,” pastoralists nasir (leader) Ibrahim Abdalla said.
In nearby Kafod, the hundreds of donkeys gathered on the edge of the town show it is market day. Farmer Abdelrahman Hamad grows potatoes, radishes and onions on the Wadi El Ku, which runs nearby, and said he lost people to the conflict.
“But the project has brought us together,” he said. “Now I can go to the pastoralists’ area no problem. There were a lot of problems to overcome, of course, but everybody needs peace.”
Downstream, at the village of Shagra, a colorful crowd of women and children have gathered to see the star entertainer Sasa. As the crowd processes around her, clicking their fingers above their heads, she sings a favorite tune: “Look at the widows and the little children / They have drained our tears / Forwards, oh Darfur.”
The gathering is celebrating 9,000 new trees being planted by a local women’s community association, replacing the many destroyed for firewood during the war. The shady spot is a now a meeting place, and the gum arabic trees a future source of income.
“The men tried to plant trees — they failed,” women’s association chair Fathia Hamed Xagod said, adding that they lacked the patience.
In El Fasher, Women’s Development Association Network chair Fuzia Abass said the Wadi El Ku project is having a big impact on women’s lives. More widespread access to water means much less time carrying it to their homes, while the greater incomes from the farms means more girls are going to school.
“But while women are doing most of the work, the men are dominant in the decisions,” she said.
The Wadi El Ku project has not been trouble-free. In 2018, the long Korga weir, built 8km from El Fasher, was sabotaged.
“All the communities upstream and downstream had agreed to the weir, whether they benefited or not,” Korga weir committee member Adam Mali said. “It worked really well in the first year and everyone was very happy. But then a few people [downstream] became jealous.”
A night-time raid with a mechanical digger fatally weakened the weir. Despite repairs, when the unusually intense rains came this year, the resulting torrent ripped a 50m hole in the structure.
This ruined its impact and forced farmers to abandon the unwatered fields. The prime suspects were linked to the deposed regime, but with no witnesses, they were released from police custody.
Still, the revolution has brought new people to power.
The new deputy wali (governor) of North Darfur, Mohammed Ibrahim Abdelkareem, said: “This sabotage was a crime. We have issued a decree to protect all the projects — the current ones and all the future ones.”
His office would also fund the restoration of the Korga weir.
“These projects contribute to the repair of Darfur society,” he said. “Water projects are usually in the areas where the war happened.”
This represents a significant change in tone, Uras said.
“I have met a few walis, but this is the first time I have heard one talk about peace,” Uras added.
Omer Abdelrahman, at the groundwater and wadi directorate in North Darfur, is clear about the critical importance of such water projects.
“Water is the key to our life — if we are breathing, we need water. If it is not equally shared, then again we will have more war and more killing,” Abdelrahman said.
However, Hamid Mohamed is cautious.
“Security is 99 percent better now,” Hamid Mohamed said. “But the situation is still fragile — the tension is still there — and nobody really knows what is going to happen tomorrow.”
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
As China steps up a campaign to diplomatically isolate and squeeze Taiwan, it has become more imperative than ever that Taipei play a greater role internationally with the support of the democratic world. To help safeguard its autonomous status, Taiwan needs to go beyond bolstering its defenses with weapons like anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. With the help of its international backers, it must also expand its diplomatic footprint globally. But are Taiwan’s foreign friends willing to translate their rhetoric into action by helping Taipei carve out more international space for itself? Beating back China’s effort to turn Taiwan into an international pariah
Typhoon Krathon made landfall in southwestern Taiwan last week, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and flooding, cutting power to more than 170,000 homes and water supply to more than 400,000 homes, and leading to more than 600 injuries and four deaths. Due to the typhoon, schools and offices across the nation were ordered to close for two to four days, stirring up familiar controversies over whether local governments’ decisions to call typhoon days were appropriate. The typhoon’s center made landfall in Kaohsiung’s Siaogang District (小港) at noon on Thursday, but it weakened into a tropical depression early on Friday, and its structure
Taiwan is facing multiple economic challenges due to internal and external pressures. Internal challenges include energy transition, upgrading industries, a declining birthrate and an aging population. External challenges are technology competition between the US and China, international supply chain restructuring and global economic uncertainty. All of these issues complicate Taiwan’s economic situation. Taiwan’s reliance on fossil fuel imports not only threatens the stability of energy supply, but also goes against the global trend of carbon reduction. The government should continue to promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, as well as energy storage technology, to diversify energy supply. It
RSS