The Perpetuation of a System of Conflicts in Darfur: Caught Between Local Violence and Regional Disorder

Abstract

In many cases in Africa, armed and non-armed local conflicts, taken separately, interact to the point of creating what can be called “complexes” or “systems”. If some of the concepts may help us to define the regional dimension of local conflicts, they do not provide us with a better understanding of the overlapping of several conflicts. Taking the example of Darfur between 2003 and 2011, this article sheds light on how violence and disorder arose and developed both at local, national and regional levels. It proposes an empirical demonstration of the originality and relevance of the concept of system of conflicts, with the aim of opening a debate on current research on definitions of conflict and war trough the African prism.