Why Sudan? Ambiguous Identities Forge Persistent Conflict

The following essay is excerpted from the prospectus for Perspectives on Genocide and Genocidal Violence in the Sudan, edited by Law School Assistant Professor Laura N. Beny, Sondra Hale of UCLA, and Lako Tongun of Claremont Colleges, California. The book is under advance contract for publication by the University of Michigan Press. Its 14 chapters, written by prominent historians, anthropologists, social scientists, political leaders, and others, “tell overlapping stories about the social constructions of race, gender, culture, and religious and political loyalties, each of which underlies the longstanding conflict” in Sudan, according to Beny, whose essay in the book is titled “Beyond Economics: Slavery in the Sudan as Genocide.” Other chapters cover Darfur, the decades’ long North-South conflict, slavery, gender crimes, the political economy of oil, and political Islam. “This book is very timely and relevant, as the crisis in Darfur has reached huge proportions and there is ongoing heated debate about UN intervention in the region,” Beny noted in September, shortly after returning from a personal and research visit to the country. On September 26 the U.S. House and Senate passed similar measures to authorize sanctions against Sudanese persons implicated in the commission of war crimes, and in October the Sudanese government expelled the chief UN envoy to the country. Beny, who was born in the Sudan, frequently speaks and writes on the country. She has served on the editorial board for the Sudan Studies Association of North America and currently is a research fellow at the U-M’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business’ William Davidson Institute, where she coordinates and manages the Sudan policy brief series of articles on economic policy issues in the Sudan