Talk:Janjaweed

message: unclear
"Size	Unknown about 8 average (less than 25,000 est.)" - I don't know what that could mean. --84.149.185.154 (talk) 22:39, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, so it was time to Be Bold 72.105.4.113 (talk) 21:02, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear 

message: The second paragraph begins, "Although the Darfur conflict has also been framed as a battle between Arabs and black Africans, everyone in Darfur is black and Muslim" [emphasis added]. Everyone? If this is true (and it seems unlikely and unverifiable), backing it up with a source would be useful. Otherwise, it should be rephrased. Toddmatic 00:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Are all Darfurians "Black and Muslim"?

message: The Janjaweed referred to as Arabs, Muslims or Baggara.  In Arabic Janjaweed means "Devil on Horseback"  My experience in South Kordofan (Nuba Mountains) showed that Baggara were massacred but NOGs never go to their camps to report massacres assuming that they are on the goverment side or they are the culprit since they are Arabs (Arabs and Terrorism are synonymous). This article should be considered carefully, for any story the other point of the story is missing. - 
:Can you refer readers to any sources on this issue published elsewhere? - Mustafaa 14:38, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: This Article is One Side of the Story

message: What's in a name Janjaweed?
Dr. Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim
The media reporting about the Janjaweed, the allegedly Arab militia wreaking havoc in Darfur, puts in perspective the distinction made by James (Scotty) Reston between news and sociology. News, he says, is only news at the receiving end; the other end is sociology. Today in Darfur there is a lot of news, but very little sociology.
The on-going discussions about the etymology of the catchword, Janjaweed, itself illustrate how news echoes a tragedy but fails to reveal its sociology. The media's use of the name makes it sound vile and draconian. But it has a simple explanation in the culture of Darfur. The commonly held view is that "Janjaweed" combines "jan" the Arabic for "evil jinni, ghoul" and "jawad," the Arabic for "horse": horsemen bent on wickedness. To emphasize the evil, some people would embellish it to make it mean "a jinni riding a horse armed with a G/J3 attack weapon. But this embellishment adds another "j" to the word that is not actually there. Mark Lacy of the New York Times, who was counting, pointed out this discrepancy to a Sudanese journalist. 
Ma'awia Abu Grun, a reporter with Khartoum al-Sahafa daily, investigated the Janjaweed practice. What emerged in his story is that the Janjaweed belongs to a recognized tradition of banditry of camel thievery in Darfur. These bandits, who come from all ethnicities, are rebellious young men. Unable to conform to the prescribed rules of achievement in their societies, they drop out of their tribes to form a group of their own. These misfits undergo two phases before becoming Janjaweed. First, they become "Abu Bazaras," roughly translated as the "black bag" stage. In this period a misfit begins a life of voluntarily homelessness characterized by carrying an "abu bazra," black bag, where he keeps all his belongings. This loafer then becomes an "um bolty," that is, a trouble maker leading a life of mischief.  
Shunned and jealous of the success of his peers in their migration to various work sites in Sudan and the Gulf area, the misfit would join follow drop-outs and take to banditry. He would find no difficulty obtaining equipment for his new business. The thirty years war in Chad (1962-1992), a Cold War battle that pitted Libya (supported by the Soviets against various Chadian rebels supported by the USA, Egypt, and Sudan), overflowed into Sudan, dumped billions of dollars worth of arms in both Chad and Sudan, and attracted "mercenaries" particularly among the well-funded, Libyan Islamic Legionnaires who operated against Chad from bases in Sudan. The ideal season for Janjaweed activity is when inter-tribal wars take place like the ones raging in Darfur.
Camel thievery has been long romanticized in pre-Islamic Arabia and Sudanese pastoral regions. The tradition has had something of a Robinhood quality. Thieves would seize the camels of rich land owners and drive them home in broad daylight. They would butcher some of them at bars for their lovers and friends. The poetic tradition emerging from this banditry evokes a belligerent loneliness and insights on the worth of life, money, women, courage, and the company of fellow bandits.
Janjaweedism turned this poetic tradition of thievery into thuggery. Considering the complex political economy of Darfur, one is inclined to take seriously the Sudan government's denial of having control over the Janjaweed. Historically it should be remembered that central governments in Sudan have had a tenuous control over a country approximately one third of the size of the USA. Darfur alone is the size of France. Measuring their limited reach, the central governments have been in the habit of using selected local communities to fight a proxy. To bring Darfur into the fold of Sudan in 1874 and 1916, the Turkish regime (1821-1885) and the British administration (1989-1956) both had to mobilize local forces to achieve their goals. Furthermore, post independence governments allied with local communities in Southern Sudan to destroy the rebels of the region from within. Hence it is logical to assume that the current regime might have occasionally set the Janjaweed loose against the two rebel movements in Darfur. The regime especially abhors one of these movements for its suspected subjection to the control of Dr. Hasan al-Turabi, the godfather of the Sudan government before the famous fallout in 1999. It remains to be seen if this is the case.
This government co-option of the Janjaweed, however, is a far cry from saying that it created it or even that it can break it. Sudanese government officials may have promised the international community something beyond its capacity when they committed the government to subdue the Janjaweed within a month ending September 2. While it protested that a month was not enough, the government succumbed under pressure, and the broken promise is haunting it. The report presented by the UN envoy to monitor the compliance of the government was critical of the Sudanese authorities for not restraining the Janjaweed after the passage of the month. And now international intervention in Sudan is being seriously considered. 
The international community may be right to intervene in timely fashion to protect a population at risk. But this intervention should take into consideration the long-term interests of the nation-building process in a country as raw as Sudan. Salman Rushdie said it best when he advised that the West should respond to 9/11 in a deft and measured way lest a random attack lead to bombing another Sudanese aspirin factory as the Clinton Administration did in 1998 to punish Sudan for its alleged role in destroying the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But this intervention should be short and sweet. No Kosovo, please. After five long years of the intervention of the international community to save the Kosvars from Belgrade, the province is in limbo: the mobish, bloody outbreak last March is weighing heavily on the interventionist. The international community has to take the statistics of Darfur death victims with a grain of salt. Forensic teams estimate now that the Serbs and Kosvars who died as a result of ethnic confrontations before the war as a few thousand. Although enough to warrant an intervention, the number is way below the estimated 100.000 to 200.000 that mobilized people to support the Clinton war.
===The Author===
Dr.Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim teaches African history and Islam at the University Of Missouri-Columbia. His book Manichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in Sudan, 1898-1885 is forthcoming from Brill.
: This is an interesting quote; its points should be incorporated into the article too.  But where was this article published? - Mustafaa 00:58, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Janjaweed:  The Other Side of the Story

message: Dr.Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim teaches African history and Islam at the University Of Missouri-Columbia. His book Manichaean Delirium: Decolonizing the Judiciary and Islamic Renewal in Sudan, 1898-1885 is forthcoming from Brill.
: This is an interesting quote; its points should be incorporated into the article too.  But where was this article published? - Mustafaa 00:58, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The Author

message: The original etymology I was looking at was one I found here:
http://www.islamonline.net/English/ArtCulture/2004/08/article06.shtml:
The term janjaweed, originally borrowed from Chad, consists of three syllables: jan means ?man?; je means ?G-3 machine gun,? very popular in Darfur; wid means ?horse.? The whole word therefore means ?the man who rides a horse and carries a G-3 machine gun.?
Here's another (with dubious English):
http://www.darfournews.net/Darfournews_EN/Janjawed.htm
Janjaweed is A Darfurian local slang ? composed of three words, Dijin Jawad ( horse ) and Gim3 ( Gun ) it means in Sudanese collocial [sic] " A dijin [sic], that is holding a Gim3 gun and riding a horse "
The term goes to those youth, who came for looting, raping away from government, local or central eyes ( Supervision ) .''
And here's one more, from Al-Ahram:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/701/re11.htm
Those tribe members who excel in horseback riding and hunting call themselves Janjaweed, an appellation said to blend three words: jinn (spirit), the English word "gun", and jawad (horse). Janjaweed, therefore, can be translated as a gun-toting, horse-riding fiend, so to speak.
Is there some way we could sort out the actual etymology of this word?
Just found this thread on the Arabic Linguist List: 
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409C&L=arabic-l&P=R288&D=1&H=0&O=T&T=1
Maybe I should just let it go :)
--babbage 09:06, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology

message: I am getting rid of the NPOV dispute as there have been no major edits to this article since November and nothing on the talk page since December. — Trilobite (Talk) 22:53, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV dispute

message: "Characterising the Darfur war as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality. Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous, African and Muslim - just like Darfur's non-Arabs, who hail from the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and a dozen smaller tribes."
*"Darfur's deep grievances defy all hopes for an easy solution" by Alex de Waal, The Guardian, July 25, 2004
Editors need to be more careful and diligent about characterizing this group. According to most academic and historical sources, designating the Janjaweed as "Arab" (by race) is careless. The Janjaweed identify as Arabs, but are racially black African. I'll work on incorporating more sources to back this up. I've already put a few up.--Kitrus 08:17, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly, as I stated elsewhere "This article really needs to be careful in not reflecting a particular brand of anti-Arab propaganda which identifies the conflict as some kind of race-war between black Africans and non-native Arabs. This is false, since the Sudanese Arabs are native blacks as well, but are simply culturally arabized, though also mixed with Arabs to some extend (black and Arab are not mutually exclusive terms). This is a cultural conflict, not racial. So please, keep that shit out of here." FunkMonk (talk) 14:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Race designation of Janjaweed 

message: How do you pronounce Janjaweed?14:02, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: So is the etymology established or unproven?  That is all. - Gilgamesh 04:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me that despite it's uncertain origins as to which dialect is the primary source (being a term of syncretic origins) janjaweed is absolutely 100% a term related specifically to raiders mounted on horses. VanTucky 05:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then someone knowledgeable on the issue should clarify the relevant sentences, and cite sources. - Gilgamesh 14:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-contradiction: "Horse" etymology 

message: We're doomed. [1]  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.171.9 (talk) 23:08, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uwe Boll is apparently making a movie about Janjaweed 

message: here i am writing my first view point of Dar fur crisis which contain a graet deal of suffering and bitterness specially of those who lack the fire of war and those who an instabiltity and the persueing of thr regim of sudan government.
 we are always thinking and asking a bout the united nations role of this confillicts it took more than six years but till now no solutions for the region people .  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.64.25.157 (talk) 08:46, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  darfur crisis 

message: Is there such a thing as an unarmed gunman? J.M. Archer (talk) 16:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "mostly armed gunmen" 

message: I removed the statement regarding the accuracy of the UN definition of the Janjaweed, because it didn't contradict that information. There could be 100 more ethnic groups with members in the Janjaweed and it could still be true that the militia's core is principally constituted of members of the two ethnic groups stated.50.147.26.108 (talk) 15:37, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Instances of members of other ethnic groups in Janjaweed 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Janjaweed. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add  after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/701/re11.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 14:14, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Janjaweed. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=506&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=180&no_cache=1
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070328023854/http://www.justiceafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/DeWaal_WhoAretheDarfurians.pdf to http://www.justiceafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/DeWaal_WhoAretheDarfurians.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:19, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified