The famine and violence of the final years of Ali Dinar's reign, together with the first years in which the Condominium state established its authority in Darfur might well be described as a second um kwakiyya (time of damnation) for the peoples of Darfur. Whilst the troubles of the final years of Ali Dinar's reign are well acknowledged (and will not be discussed further here), the violence of the early years of Condominium conquest and rule has been downplayed in the existing literature. This is surprising, given that readily available documentation evidences the widespread violence brought by the arrival of the British, both during the initial conquest and through the years following to 1921. Conquest, as well as the casualties it inflicted on Ali Dinar's troops, made arms more widely available, and licensed major raids and counter-raids between local populations. In the first years of British rule, state representatives used violence as a matter of course to enforce their demands, and met violent rebellion with the full, crushing force of the state's military technologies. This was a period of great turbulence and insecurity.

But colonial conquest and ‘pacification’ in Africa – always a process that involved considerable violence – has repeatedly been shown not simply to have been a one-way encounter between overwhelming European technology and military organization, versus African armies decimated by the Maxim gun. Colonial violence was also channelled in specific directions, against specific peoples, and was not experienced in the same way by all populations. This variability was the product of the manner of interaction between colonial officials and officers – who aimed to exploit and exacerbate local divisions in order to facilitate their conquest, and members of local elites – who aimed to turn colonial military technology to their own advantage in the pursuit of local rivalries. In Darfur (and along its frontiers), this interaction between state and local interests resulted in the rise of tribal militias, who wielded government military technology with significant impunity whilst serving both colonial and their own, local agendas. These so-called ‘friendlies’ were prominent in colonial military campaigns, both in 1916 and in the following years.