Briefings

Tribal fights have claimed thousands of lives in recent years in Darfur region of western Sudan. Competition over scarce and diminishing resources is the usual cause of conflict, pitting nomads against nomads, nomads against cultivators, migrants from Chad across the border against local inhabitants, and Arabs against Fur. While men do the fighting, some women have the role of appraising men's conduct in war. They can make or break a man's reputation with their poems and songs that praise aggression and bravery and ridicule timidity and cowardice.