The Grey Zone Between Victims and Perpetrators

Stories about conflicts are often framed as stories about perpetrators and victims. Rhetorically, morally, these distinctions often make sense.

Yet these distinctions are also brutal simplifications. Perpetrators act, whereas victims are denied any equivalent agency. They are simply people to whom things are done, or people to whom help must be given.

Reality is never quite so straight-forward.  There's a grey zone between victim and perpetrator; individuals in positions of power, individuals who bear some responsibility for the suffering they bring on themselves and others.

This grey zone exists in all conflicts, including Darfur.

The conflict erupted in 2003, when rebel groups drawn primarily from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes attacked Sudanese military bases in the region.  In response, the Sudanese military began a brutal counter-insurgency campaign, including the use of Janjaweed militias.

The Janjaweed - drawn primarily from nomadic tribes - were unleashed against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa, hundreds of thousands of whom were killed, millions of whom were displaced. Many of the displaced person camps, in turn, became highly politicized.

What responsibility do individual Fur, Masalit or Zaghawa leaders who originally supported the rebel groups bear for what happened afterwards? What risk calculations did they make when they decided to support the SLA or JEM?

And, when we talk about the importance of community participation in any Darfur peace process, are we empowering those same leaders to once again speak for their communities?

I know, I know - this could easily shade into a morally reprehensible, blame-the-victim sort of justification for atrocities.  But unless we understand these dynamics, and how these dynamics impact the calculations of other actors like the Sudanese Government, our analysis - and the solutions we propose - will be fatally limited, no matter how strong our rhetoric.

[Photo from publik15's Flickr stream, Creative Commons license.]