‘Our Darfur, Their Darfur’: Sudan’s Politics of Deviance and the Rising ‘Ethnic-Cleansing’in an African Emerging Anarchy

This article analyses the current civil war in the Republic of theSudan’s [RoS] western region of Darfur within the broad context of the country’s age-old crisis of governance at the national level; conditioned by the inequitable State’s policies of the central state and its dominant Arab elite. Using Frost’s [1996] identified ‘settled’ body of norms in international relations to probe Sudan’s conducts in domestic and international politics, this paper found Khartoum guilty of gross misconducts and violations of international humanitarian law [IHL].These deviant behaviours, rooted in its quest to establish a theocratic state and export its radical ideology overseas, have pitted the RoS with the wider international community. Drawing from Khartoum’s current military engagements in Darfur and previous similar operations, this study contends strongly that for Sudan to come out of its present political hiccup, its rulers must jettison its lopsided policies in preference for the ones that are inclusive of all ethnic formations in the country with sincerity of purpose. In the final analysis, it is argued that this can onlybecomes meaningful within the context of improved socio-economicconditions. This, stricto sensus, calls for the Africa’s development partners and the wider international community’s economic support to Sudan.