The Genocide in Darfur began in 2003, and since then, has evolved into one of the most deadly, complicated conflicts of our time. In the early stages of the war in Darfur, the fighting lines were clear: rebels of ethnic African tribes fought against the Sudanese Government, which was backed by Arab militias throughout Darfur, primarily over access to arable land and water, and an equal allocation of government resources for blacks and Arabs. In the early days, it was easy to view the conflict as Genocide—when the government retaliated against the rebels, they held little regard for civilian deaths; it was systematic ethnic cleansing. Genocide. There are no exact figures, but since 2003, somewhere between 200,000 to 400,000 people have estimated to have died as a result of violence, sickness, or hunger caused by the crisis, and more than 2.5 million have been forced from their homes into camps for internally displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region, and refugee camps in neighboring Chad. Seven years on into the Darfur conflict, the media continues to portray Darfur as an emergency situation--as the same war it was 6 years ago; it is not. The humanitarian crisis and war in Sudan’s Darfur has evolved into a combination of tedious tribal warfare—ethnic African tribes killing other ethnic Africans, Arab tribes fighting amongst themselves, a splintered rebel movement which often provokes the government in areas heavily populated by civilians, and then withdraws from the area leaving the civilians exposed to government bombing campaigns, and the fundamental conflict between tribes’ access to grazing land for cattle, to water, to resources. The civilians of Darfur have lived so long in camps for internally displaced people, that they have become almost entirely dependant upon the United Nations and foreign aid intervention.
