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The War in Darfur refers to the civil war being waged in the Darfur region of western Sudan, which has been ongoing since February 26, 2003. The conflict, which has been labeled the “world's greatest humanitarian crisis” by the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, first arose when two local rebel groups in the Darfur region of western Sudan revolted against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing the government of oppressing the non-Arabs in favor of the Arab populace. Due to this rebellion, the Sudanese government and government-supported militia factions have been consistently attacking certain groups in the region and cleansing certain groups in Darfur. Although the exact number of victims varies from 300,000 to 450,000 depending on the organization making the count, it is known that millions have been displaced from their homes. . The United Nations and International Criminal Court have attempted to intervene in the situation by sending peacekeeping troops, enacting various economic sanctions, and indicting responsible government officials, but have had limited success.

The War in Darfur has had many effects on both the country as a whole and its neighboring nations. These effects on Sudan are both obvious, such as the displacement of millions of people, and more subtle, such as the lack of justice and the corruption in the Sudanese government. Throughout the last century, a number of similar conflicts have arisen in countries across the world, including the most-notable Holocaust in the late 1930s and 1940s, the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, and the Bosnian Genocide in 1995. Although the violence and displacement of the population is similar to the above events, the crisis is argued to not be genocide, as the victims (primarily the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to have a different ethnicity from their attackers.

Causes of the Conflict
A number of factors have provoked the crisis, such as the country’s lack of resources, inhabitable terrain and uneven population distribution. Sudan is Africa's largest country, and stretches from Egypt in the north to Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya in the south, from Chad and the Central African Republic in the west to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the east. Prior to the conflict, it was believed that with an average population density of nine persons per square kilometer, population density in Sudan was not a major problem. This assumption failed to take into account that much of the country is uninhabitable and its people were unevenly distributed, with about 33 percent of the nation's population occupying 7 percent of the land. In fact, 66 percent of the population lived within 300 kilometers of the city of Khartoum. Due to the sheer size of the country of Sudan and its high population growth rate of 3.1 percent, it was inevitable that the populace would exceed the country’s supply of natural resources, creating competition for resources, eventually leading to armed conflict. This struggle for natural resources makes the War in Darfur unlike the two prior Sudanese Civil Wars, which were largely based on religious beliefs. The high rate population growth and limited resources set the War in Darfur to be based primarily on ethnicity and geographic location.

Aside from fighting over scarce resources such as inhabitable land and grazing areas for Sudanese livestock, natural disasters are also to blame for inciting the violence, specifically drought and famine. Drought is an innate attribute of the barren regions of western Sudan and north Darfur, causing death and unrest for centuries. Over the last hundred years, there have been five instances of drought. Two of these instances occurred in the last twenty years alone, aiding in the civil unrest in Sudan, specifically from the 1970s until present day. In certain regions of Sudan, a minor 100mm decline in the mean annual precipitation can bring a population and livestock to the brink of disaster. When natural disasters occur such as these, the populace must fight in order to survive in these harsh conditions. This response is reinforced by accusations against the government regarding unfair distribution of resources to the Sudanese population.

Combatants
One side of the armed conflict is composed essentially of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group recruited mostly from the Afro-Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat region in Sudan. Although the Sudanese government publicly denies its support of the Janjaweed, there is evidence that the government has provided money and assistance to the militia and has participated in joint attacks targeting civilian groups who support the rebel forces.

The rebel forces are comprised of a variety of groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. These two factions are recruited primarily from the non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. While the SLM and JEM differ in histories and ideologies, the two co-operate in their struggle against the Sudanese government to gain political equality and an equal share of the scarce resources in Sudan.

Effects on Sudan and its Population
The effects of the War in Darfur have a profound effect on the entire population living in Sudan. Aside from the estimated 300,000 casualties due to the combined effects of war, disease, and famine, the conflict has displaced upwards of 2.7 million civilians from their homes Some non-governmental organizations claim 60,000 to more than 100,000 people have been killed; the latter is a figure from the Coalition for International Justice. , forcing them to find refuge in makeshift refugee camps in nearly unlivable conditions. Despite this evidence, the Sudanese government has denied the magnitude of the situation. Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir publically claims that the number of casualties lies below 10,000 individuals. This number is not remotely accurate, and it has been discovered that the Sudanese government has been murdering and imprisoning witnesses in order to suppress information regarding casualties. Although the crisis has been minimized by the Sudanese government, the United Nations is aware of the humanitarian catastrophe.

Effects on Neighboring Countries
With the situation in Sudan comes a strong influence on the neighboring countries of Chad, Ethiopia, Libya and the Central African Republic. Although these regions are not directly related to the violence between the Sudanese government and rebel groups, they have been drawn into the conflict in a number of ways. Large numbers of refugees flee from Darfur into these countries seeking safety from the militant groups. This migration affects the neighboring countries significantly, as they do not possess the means necessary to support approximately 2.7 million refugees. Many of these countries have individual refugee problems within themselves, namely Chad and the Central African Republic. In addition to the refugee crisis, the neighboring countries are also at risk of the violence spreading across Sudan's borders and affecting additional populations as well. This spread of violence could be due to the growth of the Sudanese population, as it continues to grow and Sudan's natural resources steadily deplete.

International Response to the Conflict
International attention to the Darfur conflict began primarily with reports by the advocacy organizations Amnesty International in July of 2003 and the International Crisis Group in December of 2003. Throughout the years since then, the United Nations and International Criminal Court have determined that the Sudanese government has largely supported and orchestrated war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. This was officially announced in June of 2005. Although the international community has agreed that the crisis is completely unacceptable and requires urgent action, there has been little response to the situation. A number of diplomatic missions have been made, but all have resulted in either broken ceasefires or less than hospitable actions from the Sudanese government towards the United Nations. Last November, an agreement was made that would allow peacekeeping troops in Sudan to be increased to a number of 22,000. At the time this seemed like progress towards resolution and peace, but it appears as if President Bashir has reneged on the agreement. Although the end of the crisis in Sudan is nowhere in sight, the United Nations continues to discuss options for peace with the various rebel groups and Sudanese government.

Criticism of International Response


Gérard Prunier, a scholar specializing in African conflicts, argues that the world's most powerful countries have largely limited their response to expressions of concern and demands that the United Nations take action. The UN, lacking both the funding and military support of the wealthy countries, has left the African Union to deploy a token force (AMIS) without a mandate to protect civilians. In the lack of foreign political will to address the political and economic structures that underlie the conflict, the international community has defined the Darfur conflict in humanitarian assistance terms and debated the "genocide" label.

On 16 October 2006, Minority Rights Group (MRG) published a critical report, challenging that the UN and the great powers could have prevented the deepening crisis in Darfur and that few lessons appear to have been drawn from their ineptitude during the Rwandan Genocide. MRG's executive director, Mark Lattimer, stated that: "this level of crisis, the killings, rape and displacement could have been foreseen and avoided ... Darfur would just not be in this situation had the UN systems got its act together after Rwanda: their action was too little too late." On 20 October, 120 genocide survivors of The Holocaust, the Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides, backed by six aid agencies, submitted an open letter to the European Union, calling on them to do more to end the atrocities in Darfur, with a UN peacekeeping force as "the only viable option." Aegis Trust director, James Smith, stated that while "the African Union has worked very well in Darfur and done what it could, the rest of the world hasn't supported those efforts the way it should have done with sufficient funds and sufficient equipment."

Human Rights First claimed that over 90% of the light weapons currently being imported by Sudan and used in the conflict are from China; however, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)'s "Arms Transfers Data for 2007", in 2003–2007, Sudan received 87 per cent of its major conventional weapons from Russia and 8 per cent from China. Human rights advocates and opponents of the Sudanese government portray China's role in providing weapons and aircraft as a cynical attempt to obtain oil and gas just as colonial powers once supplied African chieftains with the military means to maintain control as they extracted natural resources. According to China's critics, China has offered Sudan support threatening to use its veto on the U.N. Security Council to protect Khartoum from sanctions and has been able to water down every resolution on Darfur in order to protect its interests in Sudan. Accusations of the supply of weapons from China in breach of a UN arms embargo continue to arise.

There has been further evidence of the Sudanese government's murder of civilians to actually facilitate the extraction of oil. The U.S.-funded Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, which investigates attacks in southern Sudan concluded that "as the Government of Sudan sought to clear the way for oil exploration and to create a cordon sanitaire around the oil fields, vast tracts of the Western Upper Nile Region in southern Sudan became the focus of extensive military operations." Sarah Wykes, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, an NGO that campaigns for better natural resource governance, says: "Sudan has purchased about $100m in arms from China and has used these weapons against civilians in Darfur."

Calls for sustained pressure and possible boycotts of the Olympics came from French presidential candidate François Bayrou, actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative Ronan Farrow, author and Sudan scholar Eric Reeves and the Washington Post editorial board. Sudan divestment efforts have also concentrated on PetroChina, the national petroleum company with extensive investments in Sudan.

On the opposite side of the issue, publicity given to the Darfur conflict has been criticized in some segments of the Arab media as exaggerated. Statements to this effect take the view that the "lobby to save Darfur...is just the Israel lobby nicknamed", and by raising the issue of Darfur, Israeli lobby is trying "to divert attention from Israel's crimes, or the catastrophe of the war in Iraq", and that Western attention to the Darfur crisis is "a cover for what is really being planned and carried out by the Western forces of hegemony and control in our Arab world." While "in New York, ... there are thousands of nude posters screaming 'genocide' and '400,000 people dead," in reality only "200,000 have been killed." Furthermore, "what has been done" in Darfur is "not genocide," simply "war crimes." Another complaint made is that "there is no ethnic cleansing being perpetrated" in Darfur, only "great instability" and "clashes between the Sudanese government, rebel movements and the Janjaweed."

Eight people including U.S. Representatives James McGovern, John Lewis, Donna Edwards, Lynn Woolsey and Keith Ellison were arrested for civil disobedience in April 2009 when they spoke at the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. to raise awareness of genocide. During March, Al-Bashir had asked international aid groups bringing food, health care and water, to leave Darfur.

The Future of Sudan
The overall future of the country of Sudan is uncertain. The conflict stems from unavoidable factors such as drought and famine. In addition to these natural disasters, Sudan's previously mentioned high rate of population growth may increase conflict in certain regions. With increasing numbers of soldiers on both sides of the conflict, there is inevitable violence and conflict over the ever-decreasing natural resources. If the international community does not regulate the Sudanese government, prosecute the crimes against humanity and establish a stable and fair system to distribute natural resources among the populace, the violence may spread indefinitely to neighboring countries.

Timeline
A rebellion started in 2003 against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, with two local rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) — accusing the government of oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs. The government was also accused of neglecting the Darfur for a Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to assess the Sudanese conflict. On 31 January 2005, the UN released a 176-page report saying that while there were mass murders and rapes of Darfurian civilians, they could not label the atrocities as "genocide" because "genocidal intent appears to be missing". . Many activists, however, refer to the crisis in Darfur as genocide, including the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network. These organizations point to statements by former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, referring to the conflict as genocide. Other activist organizations, such as Amnesty International, while calling for international intervention, avoid the use of the term genocide. In May 2006 Minni Minnawi's faction of the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, agreed to a draft peace agreement with the Sudanese government. The other faction of the SLM, led by Abdul Wahid al Nur, the founding leader of SLM, refrained from signing the agreement. On 5 May, the agreement, drafted in Abuja, Nigeria, was signed by Minnawi's faction and the Sudanese government.

In February 2009 the Justice and Equality Movement planned a ceasefire with the Sudan government within the next three months.