"[url=http://www.ucc.ie/oneworld/historyoftheconflict.html wrote:

UCC[/url]"]The war, which risks inflicting irreparable damage on a delicate ethnic balance of seven million people who are uniformly Muslim, is actually multiple intertwined conflicts. One is between government-aligned forces and rebels; a second entails indiscriminate attacks of the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia on civilians; and a third involves a struggle among Darfur communities themselves. Its implications go far beyond Darfur's borders. The war indirectly threatens the regimes in both Sudan and Chad and has the potential to inspire insurgencies in other parts of the country.

It is sometimes characterised as an Arab-African conflict over rights to land and investment. The east-west divide can be traced back a long time.

Successive Muslim governments conquered the land from the Daju tribes in the 14th century and held sway for centuries, trading in slaves and ivory, before British Egypt colonised Sudan and Darfur in 1875 and favoured the Arab Nile regions, leaving a mostly autonomous Darfur in the cold. During WWI, fearing Turkish invasion, the British formally annexed Darfur to Sudan, which went on to achieve independence in 1956.

Darfur embraced Sudanese independence and backed the ruling Umma Party only to meet with neglect. At this time the prosperous Arabs often referred to themselves as the "awlad el beled" ("children of the country"), the English as the "awlad el gharb" ("children of the west"), thought insulting, and the Africans merely as "zurga" ("Blacks"). Needless to say the Africans remained in poverty for the rest of the twentieth century, receiving some 5% of all investment despite being the more sizeable population.

"[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict wrote:

Wikipedia[/url]"]In the 1968 elections, factionalism within the ruling Umma Party led candidates, notably Sadiq al-Mahdi, to try to split off portions of the Darfuri electorate either by blaming the region's underdevelopment on the Arabs, in the case of appeals to the stationary peoples, or by appealing to the Baggara semi-nomads to support their fellow Nile Arabs. This Arab-African dichotomy, which was not an indigenously developed way of perceiving local relations, was exacerbated after Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi became focused on establishing an Arab belt across the Sahel and promulgated an ideology of Arab supremacy. As a result of a sequence of interactions between Sudan, Libya and Chad from the late 1960s through the 1980s, including the creation of the Libyan-supported Islamic Legion, Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry established Darfur as a rear base for the rebel force led by Hissène Habré, which was attempting to overthrow the Chadian government and was also anti-Gaddafi.

In 1983 and 1984, the rains failed and the region was plunged into a famine. The famine killed an estimated 95,000 people out of a population of 3.1 million. Nimeiry was overthrown on 5 April 1985, and Sadiq al-Mahdi came out of exile, making a deal with Gaddafi, which al-Mahdi did not honor, to turn over Darfur to Libya if he was supplied with the funds to win the upcoming elections.

In the 1980s an African force, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, was formed and the Government of Sudan armed mostly Arab militias including the infamous Janjaweed to keep them at bay, however in 1991 these Arab groups also attempted to seize long-contested African tribal areas, wiping out some 600 villages. These areas are valued mostly for water access and grazing rights. The government, who had already disarmed the African tribes, sided with the Arabs and formed an official alliance. Massacres and conflict became endemic and the Africans were economically strangled.

In 2003 an African army, the Darfur Liberation Front, which soon changed its name to the Sudan Liberation Army, began attacking government and military targets, demanding for the Arabs a democratic say in government. The DLF/SLA was allied with tribal forces that had banded together in previous years including the relatively small Justice and Equality Movement.

"[url=http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/36028.htm wrote:

The US State Department[/url]"]The GOS has provided support to Arab militiamen attacking non-Arab civilians, according to press and NGO reports. Refugee accounts corroborated by US and other independent reporting suggest that Khartoum has continued to provide direct support for advancing Jingaweit. Aerial bombardment and attacks on civilians reportedly have occurred widely throughout the region; respondents named more than 100 locations that experienced such bombardment (see [url=http://www.state.gov/cms_images/9347_sudan_fixed_501.jpg]map[/url]). The extent to which insurgent base camps were co-located with villages and civilians is unknown. The number of casualties caused by aerial bombardment cannot be determined, but large numbers of Darfurians have been forced to flee their villages. According to press and NGO reports, the GOS has given Jingaweit recruits salaries, communication equipment, arms, and identity cards.

A [url=http://www.unsudanig.org/workplan/support/docs/Darfur_Peace_Agreement.pd... agreement[/url] was signed by the GOS and the SLM in May 2006, to be implemented by October 2006, but violations are ongoing. The agreement calls for the Janjaweed to be disarmed, fighters to be educated or integrated into the army and police, buffer zones to be established and democratic power sharing implemented. The agreement promises international aid of $700m.

"[url=http://www.unsudanig.org/workplan/2007/docs/darfur/WP07_D_regional_workp... wrote:

The UN[/url]"][b]Situation Analysis[/b]
The signature of the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in May 2006 provided the framework for the cessation of armed conflict in Darfur and, by extension, improved security and protection for both IDP and host communities. Unfortunately, the DPA has suffered from lack of widespread support, aggravated by the failure of all parties involved in the conflict to assent to its provisions. As such implementation has been delayed and, contrary to hopes, episodes of armed conflict have increased.

Insecurity continues to be central to the challenges of Darfur. Arms proliferate and impunity abounds, while capacity to enforce legal mechanism is weak. The limited mandate of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), and the constraints under which it operates, have restricted its protective capacity, and resulted in a general loss of confidence among IDPs and other vulnerable populations. The presence of the janjaweed and other militia throughout the region remains an issue, as does the prevalence of unexploded ordinance. General lawlessness is common among all groups, and camps have reported increases in incidences of banditry and personal violence; violence against children and heightened levels of sexual and gender-based violence directed at women. These issues are of particular concern. Furthermore, regional tensions, most notably those associated with the effective closure of the Chad-Sudan border, have exacerbated insecurity.

The protracted conflict and insecurity throughout the region has adversely affected the social and cultural norms of its communities and has resulted in significant displacement, increased dependence on international assistance, and strain upon government structures. Such social fragmentation is further illustrated by the deterioration of traditional mechanisms for conflict resolution and the introduction of new cleavages along ethnic and political lines.

The climate of violence continues to cause hardship and suffering for the civilian populations given its affect on markets and agricultural production. The economy has suffered devastation due to the conflict as traditional trading relationships and routes have been destroyed, and agricultural production virtually ground to a halt. Further impoverishment is made probable as a result of the nearly universal destruction or attrition of livelihood options coupled with the erosion of coping mechanisms.

Increased migration over the past few years has heightened tensions over natural resources. Water, firewood and land for grazing remain flashpoints for localised conflicts and fuel existing tensions.

The region has been host to increasing numbers of IDPs, primarily due to fighting between various factions involved in the conflict, while large areas of the region remain inaccessible to humanitarian actors due to insecurity. Furthermore, the past year has seen the prospects for safe, voluntary and dignified return shrink considerably as security has deteriorated. As such, the situation across Darfur is unlikely to be conducive to large-scale returns unless the political situation stabilises and the root causes of the conflict are addressed. However, smallscale voluntary returns are expected to continue in pockets of relative security and, as in 2006, agencies will continue to strengthen information systems to verify the voluntariness of returns, and to increase IDP profiles in an effort to better identify potential areas of return.

Humanitarian operations have suffered greatly during 2006. Access and security have been the greatest hurdles as factionalism within rebel groups increased, complicating access negotiations. In a number of areas, the targeting of humanitarian actors and programmes has led to their complete withdrawal resulting in the curtailment of many activities, including health, food distributions and water and sanitation, further endangering the health and wellbeing of an already highly vulnerable population.

[b]The Planning Assumptions for 2007[/b]
Darfur will continue to represent a complex emergency situation in 2007, with a population of 3.5 million heavily reliant upon the provision of humanitarian assistance. Insecurity will continue to represent a significant challenge, reflecting an unstable and tense environment. Protracted fighting and tribal/ethnic tensions will likely result in further displacement and adversely affect the forthcoming harvest. Thus, livelihoods and local coping mechanisms will be further compromised, while levels of environmental stress rise. These external forces are likely to further foment insecurity within camp settings.

"[url=https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/su.html wrote:

The CIA[/url]"]the effects of Sudan's almost constant ethnic and rebel militia fighting since the mid-twentieth century have penetrated all of the neighboring states; as of 2006, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda provided shelter for over half a million Sudanese refugees, which includes 240,000 Darfur residents driven from their homes by Janjawid armed militia and the Sudanese military forces

Estimated death tolls suggest around 500,000 killed in the Darfur conflict.

[list] [list] [img]http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/3674/darfurmaptx2.png[/img][/list:u][...

All the above information is far from comprehensive. For more details you might like to check [url=http://www.sudanreeves.org/]Eric Reeves'[/url] extensive documentation and summaries by [url=http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-darfur]Answers.com[/url] and [url=http://coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com/2005/03/short-history-of-darfur.h... for Darfur[/url]. I hope this has been useful.

yepm it is Muslims killing Muslims.

The only ones who seem to want the situation to improve is non-Muslims.

Says alot about us Muslims as a whole don't it?