"Past Imperfect: The Roots of Darfur"

Underlying the present hostilities is not only the contemporary political conflict and competition for scarce land and water resources among rival ethnic groups, but also the long, complex history of enslavement and racism in East Africa. Beginning in the tenth century, a.d., the Trans-Saharan slave trade exported East Africans to be sold as slaves in the Arab peninsula. The trade stretched for a full millennium - six hundred years longer than the Trans-Atlantic trade that brought West Africans to the Americas. It was this Saharan trade that dispersed black populations as far as present-day Iran and Iraq, where their descendants remain. (The name "Sudan" is, in fact, derived from the Arabic "Bilad al Sudan" or "Land of the Blacks" - a term that was often used as a general reference to Africa, not solely the current Sudanese nation.) To be accurate, the Arab enslavement did not focus solely upon Africans - Eastern Europeans were also traded as slaves in the Arab peninsula (which is where we derive the term "Slavic" peoples.) Nor was Arab slavery identical to its Western counterpart, as there were a number of circumstances under which one could attain emancipation and slaves often rose to socially significant positions - particularly in the military.

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