Darfur—Ground Zero for Africa's Crises of Identity: A Psychohistoriography of Tribes in Conflict

Ongoing diplomatic and peacekeeping initiatives by the international community in Darfur over the past decade have failed to stem the violence and resolve social conflict. Based primarily on political analysis, such initiatives do not address the underlying causes of the civil war at the individual, family, and tribal levels. This paper examines the psychological and sociological motivations for the violence within and between the Arab and African tribes of Darfur to include motivation exploration of ethnic defections, failing cultural identity markers, and the effects of cognitive dissonance of the personal and social identities of the Darfur tribes.