The Myth of the Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom Part I — The Myth and Its Origins Dr. El-Tahir El-Fa

06:05 PM September, 25 2026

Sudanese Online
Dr.El-Tahir El-Faki-UK
My Library
Short URL



The Myth of the Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom

Part I — The Myth and Its Origins

Dr. El-Tahir El-Faki

For more than two decades, a curious political myth has circulated in Sudan and Chad: that the Zaghawa people were preparing to establish a Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom stretching from Darfur across the border into Chad.

The story has appeared in political conversations, security narratives and occasional writings as though it represented a coherent political programme. According to its more elaborate versions, the historical Zaghawa presence around the Lake Chad region provided the foundation for a modern political project that would eventually unite Zaghawa territories on both sides of the Sudan-Chad border.

Yet there has always been a fundamental problem with this proposition.

Where is the political programme؟

Where are its institutions؟

Where are its declared leaders؟

Where is the evidence that the Zaghawa, as a community, ever agreed to such a project؟

The absence of convincing answers to these questions should have made the proposition what it really was: a political myth rather than an established fact.

The persistence of the myth, however, requires explanation.

History, geography and imagination

There are historical reasons why such a story could sound plausible to someone unfamiliar with the region.

The Zaghawa have lived for centuries across an area that modern political borders divided between Sudan and Chad. Family, pastoral, commercial and social networks have never respected the frontier in the way modern states do.

There is also a genuine historical memory of Zaghawa political formations in the wider eastern Sahara and Lake Chad region. Medieval states and chiefdoms existed in an environment in which political authority was fluid and territorial boundaries differed fundamentally from those of the modern nation-state.

But historical memory does not constitute a contemporary political programme.

The existence of an ancient Zaghawa polity cannot reasonably be used to demonstrate that today’s Zaghawa intend to recreate it.

This distinction became particularly important after the outbreak of the Darfur rebellion in 2003.

Refugees and relatives

The war in Darfur produced an enormous movement of civilians into neighbouring Chad. Among them were large numbers of Zaghawa, but the refugees were by no means exclusively Zaghawa.

For Zaghawa refugees, however, the border presented an unusual circumstance. Many found themselves among people who were not strangers but relatives, members of the same extended families or communities with whom they had maintained commercial and social relations for generations.

The distinction between refugee and established resident could consequently become blurred.

New arrivals found relatives willing to provide accommodation. Traders found commercial opportunities. Farmers found land. Children entered schools. Marriages connected families. Businesses expanded.

Over time, some refugees became established in Chad.

From outside the community, this could look like territorial expansion.

From inside it, it was often something much simpler: survival through family networks.

The presence of established Zaghawa communities in Chad made this process easier. A displaced family arriving in Chad did not necessarily arrive in an alien country. It could arrive among people with whom it shared language, ancestry and family connections.

This is one of the reasons why the demographic reality of the border region has repeatedly been misunderstood.

Education and economic mobility

There was another factor that contributed to the myth: the remarkable social mobility achieved by sections of the Zaghawa community.

Over several decades, increasing numbers of Zaghawa embraced education, commerce and professional advancement. Young people entered universities, acquired professional qualifications and moved into business and government.

The resulting economic success was sometimes interpreted not as the product of education, discipline and entrepreneurship, but as evidence of a hidden political network.

This interpretation was profoundly misleading.

Economic mobility is not evidence of territorial ambition.

A successful merchant crossing borders for business is not an imperial strategist.

A student attending university in Khartoum is not necessarily preparing for ethnic domination.

A refugee settling among relatives in Chad is not necessarily participating in the construction of a new state.

Yet during the years of the Darfur conflict, these separate developments increasingly became connected in the imagination of some observers.

The Darfur rebellion

The eruption of the rebellion changed everything.

By early 2003, young Darfuris—including many Zaghawa—began leaving their jobs, education and lives in central Sudan to join the insurgency.

Their decision was not simply a tribal mobilisation.

Many believed that the Sudanese state had failed Darfur politically, economically and morally. Some had personally experienced discrimination or repression. Others had witnessed the destruction of their communities and the killing or displacement of relatives.

The Justice and Equality Movement became one of the most important vehicles of this political revolt.

Its leadership included highly educated Darfuris whose political arguments transformed Darfur’s grievances into a national debate.

But the prominence of Zaghawa figures encouraged an increasingly ethnic interpretation of the rebellion.

Instead of asking why educated young Sudanese from Darfur had abandoned promising careers to join an armed movement, some began asking what the Zaghawa were supposedly planning.

The distinction was crucial.

One question concerned politics.

The other concerned conspiracy.

The security narrative

The former Sudanese security establishment had obvious reasons to interpret the rebellion through an ethnic lens.

The Darfur movements contained people from different tribes, regions and social backgrounds. Yet the prominence of Zaghawa commanders and politicians provided a convenient framework for portraying the rebellion as an ethnic project.

The more Zaghawa youths joined the rebellion, the more their participation was presented as confirmation of the theory.

The argument became circular.

Zaghawa were joining the rebellion because the rebellion was supposedly a Zaghawa project; their participation was then used as evidence that the Zaghawa project existed.

The myth therefore acquired a political life independent of evidence.

It was repeated often enough to become familiar.

And familiarity gradually became confused with truth.

Khalil Ibrahim and Chad

The Chad dimension made the story even more complicated.

Idriss Déby was himself Zaghawa, while Zaghawa communities occupied important positions in Chadian political and economic life. The arrival of Darfuri refugees therefore had implications for Chadian domestic politics as well as for relations between Khartoum and N’Djamena.

When Dr. Khalil Ibrahim found refuge in Chad, his relationships with Zaghawa figures inevitably attracted attention.

Sudanese security officials could portray the Darfur rebellion as something more dangerous than a Sudanese insurgency: a movement with the potential to destabilise Chad and eventually alter the political balance of the region.

But this was precisely where the distinction between cross-border political consequences and a cross-border ethnic kingdom was lost.

A rebellion in Darfur could affect Chad without being a Zaghawa project to conquer Chad.

A refugee crisis could destabilise Chad without constituting a plan to redraw its borders.

A community could possess strong transnational family connections without wanting a transnational state.

The myth becomes self-sustaining

By the time JEM launched its spectacular attack on Omdurman in May 2008, the myth had acquired considerable political momentum.

The attack demonstrated that a Darfur movement possessed the military capacity to challenge the central state.

It also generated fear and anger far beyond Darfur.

For some Sudanese, however, the event appeared to confirm an older suspicion: that the Zaghawa were advancing toward Khartoum as part of a wider ethnic project.

The distinction between JEM and the Zaghawa as a whole became increasingly blurred.

That was one of the most damaging consequences of the myth.

An armed movement was transformed into a tribe.

A political rebellion was transformed into an ethnic conspiracy.

And an ethnic community was collectively associated with the actions of individuals.

The evidence that was missing

Despite all the allegations, there was never convincing evidence of a coherent Zaghawa programme for establishing a Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom.

There were no publicly articulated constitutional arrangements.

No recognised leadership structure existed for such a project.

There was no unified military command representing Zaghawa on both sides of the border.

There was no agreed political programme for incorporating Chad into a Zaghawa state.

Most importantly, Zaghawa political leaders repeatedly operated within the framework of Sudanese or Chadian national politics rather than advocating the abolition of those states.

The myth survived not because the evidence was strong, but because the political circumstances made it useful.

And then history produced an extraordinary test.

That test came with the Sudan war that began in April 2023.

The result would reveal something that the old myth had failed to understand from the beginning:

the Zaghawa were never one political bloc.
Part 2 to follow

Arabic Forum