Too often, Darfur's war is portrayed as a racial contest of indigenous African farmers against interloping Arab nomads. The reality is very different and much more complicated. Arabs have been part of Darfur's social fabric for many centuries. Farmers and herders, they make up about a third of the region's population and are victims of its historic neglect and its present war. The camel-herding Abbala are among Darfur's poorest citizens. In 2003, some Arab leaders heeded the government's call to take up arms against the rebels, but many now feel betrayed. They were especially dismayed at the outcome of the Darfur peace talks in May 2006, when the government, which had always assured the Arabs that it would take care of their interests, signed an agreement that promised to transfer political and military authority to their main rivals. Other Arab leaders tried to stay out of the war and are still trying to steer a neutral course, hoping one day to rebuild Darfur's customary good neighborly relations. Darfur's Arabs are the forgotten victims of the war. Our book, "Darfur: A New History of a Long War," seeks in part to give them a voice:

When the Fur and Zaghawa first began to organize in 2001, rumors of a shadowy armed movement called Harakat FAZAM - the Fur-Zaghawa-Masalit movement - circulated among Arabs in the markets of Darfur. A group of Arab traders returning from Libya were seized by Zaghawa bandits, and it was said they had been skinned alive. Then the Darfur Liberation Front announced itself ... and speculation ran wild. No Arab had been consulted in the formation, or the strategy, of such a front. "Our people asked, 'Who are they going to liberate Darfur from?'" said Al-Sanosi Musa, a young Mahamid Arab. "The conclusion was, they were going to liberate Darfur from the Arabs! The Arabs of Darfur are uneducated and 100 percent brainwashed by government. People were saying in markets: 'We will eliminate you!' Rumors spread like wildfire because of ignorance."

As the rebels began to build an infrastructure, Zaghawa fighters mounted a series of punishing raids on Abbala camel herds ... On the desert edge, what had been localized fights between Zaghawa and Arabs became more deadly as camel raiders began operating with vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns. In a single raid in 2002, the Ereigat Arabs reportedly lost 1,000 camels. When they tried to retrieve them, 37 of their men were shot dead. In 2002-2003, two powerful Mahamid clans - the Awlad Zeid and (Janjaweed leader) Musa Hilal's Um Jalul - lost thousands of animals ...

Many Arabs came to believe the "blacks" had armed themselves only to fight the Arabs. "The leaders said they were fighting the government, but the rank-and-file attacked Arabs," said Salah Mohamed Abdel Rahman, better known as "Abu Sura," a Rizeigat from Al-Daien who despite his criticism of the rebellion nevertheless formed Darfur's first Arab rebel group, the Popular Forces Army, in 2006 ...

As the rebel bands grew, some of them several hundred strong, they began looting their Arab neighbors to supply their growing forces ... Many Arabs felt that these raids were more than just provisioning troops; they feared that the Zaghawa were aiming to drive them out of rural areas altogether. [Minni] Minawi [the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army] did not take his well-armed forces to Jebel Marra or Dar Masalit, where thinly-defended villages were being razed by government-Janjaweed attacks, their inhabitants slaughtered and raped. His was a war of attack, not defense, and he directed his forces east to areas where, despite the war, Arabs were living relatively peacefully with their non-Arab neighbors. One of these areas was the farmland being cultivated by Zayadiya Arabs outside Mellit, capital of Dar Berti.

In 1999, and increasingly in 2000, Zayadiya militia in the Mellit area had launched punishing attacks on non-Arab villages near Mellit, sometimes with government support and sometimes without. When the rebellion came, Zayadiya farmers north and west of Mellit feared the rebels were coming to attack them - and so it proved. "The rebel bands started small and began to grow, from 20 to 50 to one hundred to one thousand," said Siddiq Umbadda, a development expert from the Zayadiya. "From where were they going to get their supplies? They could attack a police post, or if they were lucky they could attack a lorry. But most often they would look for animals to capture and slaughter. If they went after the property of their own people they would lose support, so it is better to attack their neighbors, and it so happened that those neighbors were Arabs. The Zayadiya were attacked by rebels many times, camels and goats were taken, guns were taken, people were killed. This was repeated many times. The government played on this saying 'these people are against the Arabs, you must protect yourself.'"

By early 2004, Zaghawa attacks on Zayadiya Arab farms north of Mellit had left a wide swathe of land completely deserted and thousands of families displaced, fearful of going to internally displaced persons camps and so without humanitarian relief. Then, in March 2004, Minawi's forces attacked west of Mellit and seized a small herd of goats and a simple-minded Zayadiya shepherd. "The people deliberated about what to do," said Siddiq Umbadda.

One asked, "[I]s this a deliberate provocation, to lead us into an ambush?" The Mahamid had learned earlier that when the Zaghawa attack and capture animals, if you go after them, you will fall into an ambush. So instead they would just go and take the same number of animals from any Zaghawa they came across. Most of the men in the meeting wanted to learn from this experience and did not want to chase after the stolen animals. But the wife of the man whose animals were taken organized a hakkama - a tradition whereby women sing to encourage their menfolk to be brave. She sang to insult her husband, accusing him of cowardice, commanding him to go and reclaim them by force. The husband said, "I know I am a dead man but I will go." So a party of more than 20 men was put together, some of them teenagers. They departed, with a little water, some guns, and one camel with ammunition. These rebels were waiting for them, with binoculars and guns ready. Early in the morning they ambushed them, and after a quick skirmish, the ammunition of the Zayadiya group was finished. One was shot. One of them told the young men, "run back and leave us." Three or four made it back. Nineteen were killed and the simple-minded shepherd was still missing. But that was not the issue. Something that had never happened before then occurred. The dead men were mutilated. Their hands were broken, their mouths were slashed, their eyes were pierced, their faces branded, their mouths were filled with dung, one body was partly burned and many of the dead were shot with many bullets (mostly after they died). The next day, the Zayadiya collected their dead and brought them to Mellit where they were buried in two mass graves.

Julie Flint and Alex de Waal are the authors of "Darfur: A New History of a Long War." This commentary is a series of excerpts from the expanded second edition of the book, which will be published by Zed Books in May.