| Country: | Sudan |
| Details of Formation: | In the context of the economic crisis in the late 1970s, the central government began to subcontract impoverished Arab pastoralists (Deng 2002). |
| Details of Termination: | he Arab pastoralists were still a pro-government group in 2014. |
| Purpose: | In the late 1970s, the Arab pastoralists’ main purpose was to act as a local self-provisioning protection force for the oilfields. Successive national governments later used the Arab pastoralists as a counter-insurgency force during the 1980s. (Deng 2002) |
| Organisation: | Arab Pastoralists cooperate with the police and with Border Guards militia which is affiliated to the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). They were allied to successive national governments of Sudan. |
| Weapons and Training: | Arab pastoralists are armed with Kalashnikov rifles. They receive weapons from the government of Sudan. |
| Size: | A news source from 2004 says that Arab pastoralists have a militia with 30,000 members. |
| Reason for Membership: | Many Arab Pastoralists faced a subsistence crisis, which they sought to mitigate by engaging in raiding and allying with the central government. (Deng 2002) |
| Treatment of Civilians: | Arab pastoralists regularly burn farm villages, execute farmers, demand huge sums of extortion money and seize land. In 1987, Arab pastoralists, in collaboration with the police, burnt more than 1,000 allegedly unarmed Dinka tribesmen who had sought refuge at a police station. |
| Other Information: | Arab Pastoralists are from the ethnic group Rizeigat, a subgroup of the Arab Baggara. Major tribal groups are the Rizaygat or Rizaigat a Baggara clan. The Arab pastoralists are a nomadic/semi-nomadic group worried about access to land for their animals and originally armed in order to fight against farmers. Darfur’s residents often equate the Arab Pastoralists with the Janjaweed government allied militia. Although there is some overlapping membership, news sources assert some separation between both groups. |
| References: |
Deng, Luka B. 2002. “The Sudan Famine of 1998. Unfolding the Global Dimension.” IDS Bulletin 33(4): 28-38 Information was taken from news sources listed in the PGMD |