Darfur, Sudan

I've wanted to write about the genocide in Darfur for sometime, but I've never known where to begin, so here's some background first.

It begins with the basic conflict between the central Arab and Islamic government of Khartoum and the outlying regions populated by various black African ethnic groups causing economic, political and sometimes also religious conflict. The two main rebel groups in opposition to the Arab leaning government are the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem).

In order to quell these rebellions, Arab militias, the janjaweed, were hired by the government to force most of the African population in Sudan’s western Darfur region out. To discourage resettlement, the militias have poisoned many of the arid region’s wells with animal carcasses and human corpses. Some of the janjaweed now haunt the fringes of the refugee camps and kill or rape those who stray outside. Others have been integrated into the Sudanese army or the "police" forces that patrol the camps.

The atrocities committed by the militant group is appalling—displacement, murder, and ethnic cleansing by means of killing off a majority of the young black African men and raping the women in order to "breed" in Arab traits to the next generation are just some of the things going on in the region. The numbers are hard to pin down but around 1.8 million people have been displaced from their homes and the number of dead could be as high is as half a million. (More information here.)

The international community is obviously not doing enough to help. The UN has gone as far as to say, "the violent acts do not amount to genocide." Even more disturbing news is that the CIA's close relationship with Sudan's government enables genocide there to continue. Because the Sudan's CIA-type organization, Mukhabarat, is providing the CIA with valuable information on terrorists and their planned actions against the United States, could it be that Bush administration is turning a blind eye to the Darfur genocide? More is surely to come on this developing story.