Civil war turned genocide: backed by a Sudanese government initially intent upon suppressing Sudanese insurgents, armed janjaweed forces have spent the last two years plundering villages, burning down towns, raping women, and murdering children.
What is bordering ethnic cleansing of African tribes people is also being denied by the Sudanese government.

So I read this article,
 
(from The New Yorker, posted 8.23.2004, issue of 8.30.2005 written by Samantha Power)

Here is a quick synopsis:

Civil war between Northern Muslim government forces and Southern rebels has been rampant since 1955 onward. About 2 million died in this war, most of them Christians.
1991 – Sudan becomes a haven for terrorists, religious minorities in the South are enslaved, Christians and Africans are persecuted.
1996 – President Clinton withdraws the U.S. Ambassador from Sudan, citing terrorist threats against American officials, and today there is still no U.S. Ambassador in Khartoum.
1997 – an executive order is issued barring U.S. oil companies from operating in Sudan, they can’t legally prospect there until the civil war ends. However, these reserves are still being exploited by China, Canada and Sweden.
1998 – Al Qaeda attacks American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton orders a Tomahawk missile strike on an Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory suspected of producing chemical weapons, a suspicion that still remains unproved.

At the onset of the Bush administration, more attention is given to the killings in Sudan, especially by Midland (Bush’s hometown) evangelists, their interest put U.S. government under increasing pressure to do something about the civil war.
2001 – John Danforth, Episcopal minister and 3-term senator is appointed as envoy for peace in Sudan. Danforth begins intense involvement, and Sudanese government as well as southern rebels are eager to comply so that they can end the economic sanctions and welcome American oil investors.
2003 – Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir agrees to share half the oil revenues with the south and to permit Christians in the North to escape punishments from Sharia (traditional Islamic law). Southern rebel leader John Garang is given position as Vice president in postwar government. Everyone appears to win, peace is at hand, Christians are happy, U.S. businesses get access to Sudan’s oil, and Sudanese civilians won’t have to worry about dying. The peace was a big step towards uniting Arabs, Americans, Christians, and Muslims.

The western part of Sudan, Darfur, was left out of all the negotiations.
In this land there has always been tension between the Africans and the nomadic Arabs and janjaweed. The Africans farm, and some tribes will migrate once a year. Competitions, at this time, were for economic and not ethnic regions. As the Sahara desert grew, land tensions were exacerbated, especially by influx of Arabs from surrounding regions of Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania. During these times, mostly the 1980s, some fights broke out between Arabs and African Fur tribes over use of the land, but the government was too weak to do anything about it.
In February 2003, the Sudan Liberation Army formed with the objective “to create a united democratic Sudan on the basis of equality, developing cultural and political pluralism, and moral and material prosperity for all Sudanese.” They advocated “Sudanism” – a shared identity for Arabs, Africans, Christians, and Muslims in the country. They appointed an Arab to be its commander in the South, to demonstrate the idea of proposed unity. The SLA complained that Darfur’s inhabitants are being ignored for road and building repair, schools, hospitals, civil servants, etc. The Africans were concerned about all the top government posts being given to Arabs. The SLA were largely ignored by the government as a small rebellious faction.

April 2003 – Sudan Liberation Army attacks a Sudanese military outpost in El Fasher, killing about a hundred soldiers, blowing an aircraft, and kidnapping the head of Sudanese Air Force General Ismail, who they released 45 days later.
 July 2003 - After this airport raid, the Sudanese government viewed the SLA as a serious threat and began appealing to Arab tribes leaders to defend the homeland against “rebels”; arming them to launch ground raids since they could not trust the Army’s regular Darfurian soldiers to take up arms against their own kin. In addition to these ground raids, the government sanctioned air bombings to civilian tribes and towns.

Musa Hilal – Arab “sheikh”, says he has nothing to do with the janjaweed and denies acts of rape commited by his men, although other firsthand accounts tell otherwise. He was invited by the government to back the Army and to give the Arab people guns and leadership. However, he looks the other way when his men commit atrocities during the looting and pillaging of villages

Sudanese officials are denying that they are allowing the janjaweed (nomadic Arab ruffians) to kill as they like, and claim that they have arrested janjaweed members and punished them. Upon more detailed interrogation, U.S. reporters have found that their “janjaweed prisoners” are in fact ordinary criminals arrested several years ago being passed off as janjaweed, without their knowledge. Towns such as Sania Deleiba in openly accessible areas have been set up to appear like government protected regions, with police forces set up all around, but the police forces can do nothing about janjaweed attacks; they can’t even arrest them because they are not truly backed by their government. However these set-ups give the illusion of safety. People who venture outside of the police covered boundaries are usually murdered, but they will starve if they don’t.

The janjaweed cover their tracks, beheading the bodies of the dead, burying them in ravines or covering them with sand. Without evidence, there can be no crimes or perpetrators pin-pointed and the genocide cannot be ascertained.
Thousands of refugees have fled to Chad, but are still starving. They are, however, at least free from the threat of being killed during the night.



April 2004 - Biggest hope for peacekeepers are the 53 member African Union (AU). The SLA and Sudanese government signed a temporary ceasefire, and AU agreed to send 120 unarmed monitors to Darfur. The AU officials were limited to investigating violations of the ceasefire.
July 2004 -  U.N. security council placed an arms embargo on the janjaweed and SLA rebels, but Sudanese government refused to disarm Musa Hilal and Arab tribal leaders, especially since it would then leave the Arabs vulnerable to African revenge attacks. They also rallied a separate army, appealing to young Muslims to fight international peacekeeping and protection interventions.
August 2004 - Rwanda and Nigeria sent 150 soldiers each to Darfur and AU countries pushed for permission to send several thousand more to protect civilians but Sudan has refused. The Sudanese refugees say they will only feel safe with Western troops protecting them, as African troops are susceptible to bribes. The U.S. military is overstretched as it is with its occupation of Iraq and cannot contribute troops for a peace keeping mission. It hasn’t offered to equip or transport AU troops who are unable to deploy their own. International aid workers have been sent but some of the United States’ UN alienated allies such as Russia or France have not been willing to send relief, saying that it isn’t officially genocide yet, but still a civil war and they have no place to intervene
 
Tens of thousands have been killed, over 2 million are displaced from their homes and don’t intend to return to their homelands to rebuild anytime soon because they feel unsafe.

41 hours ago: Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General visited Darfur, where refugees lined up to ask for help. They are still being picked off, and the police protection has done little. 170,000 have died from hunger and disease. He emphasizes importance of AU’s role in protection even though they are undersupplied and outnumbered, and is trying to pressure Sudanese government into intervention to help resolve the conflict.
http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/world/national/2005/05/28/sudan-050528.html

To be honest, I don’t know what we ordinary citizens can do right now.
Here is a start I guess: http://hq.demaction.org/dia/organizations/darfur/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=407
take a second and fill it out.
Yes, we have donated more in relief funds than any other country, but we still have not gone through with the embargoes we've threatened, so they are still not going to comply. I guess we need their oil. 

I need to find the truth.
When is it okay or even better for all parties involved to lie? If there are people dying and starving in all parts of the world do I give my money to the bum-with-all-his-limbs-and-nuts-in-tact who comes up to me asking for some change or should I donate it somewhere or should I save it for my little sisters, or my family who aren't in such a dire situation but to whom I have more due responsibility towards? Where do I draw the line, and what about my needs? some say I don't owe anything to anyone but myself, especially if I work for it. But the world does not work that way does it, because ever since I was born I owed something to the world, or at least to my mother and father. How can I feel contempt for someone drunk, loud and stupid if I get drunk loud and stupid sometimes too? Do I live my life how I want to, or do I have to consider what my parents need? If God loves all his children equally, why are we all born of different wakes and conditions in life and why do some people face tribulations far worse than others? How can you say that all good people go to heaven if there are differing degrees of good and evil? Being good when you're born wealthy is much easier than being altruistic after a childhood of poverty and gangs. If Jesus knew he was going to heaven afterwards, then how is his death a sacrifice to us? Especially since we were the ones that put him on the cross. Why are people who are not soldiers allowed to say anything about us "doing the right thing in Iraq" How do you know what is right and how do you force an uneducated country to comply with a state of democracy, how long do we have to babysit, for another entire generation and how many people are going to suffer by the time that comes around and finally how do i stop hating myself for being the spoiled college student with 4.5 meals a day sitting on her ass typing in her blog journal complaining about the state of the world and wondering what the whole point of this charade is when there are people who could eat for a week on waht i spend on my phone and electricity bill, do i just live without these luxuries i have, how do i apply everything i know to be right with the life I have now? And why should I study so hard when there are always going to be computers and smarter people who can do it better, and really what am I good for? yesterday at work someone stole a lap top on my shift while i was doing a fucking crossword puzzle. Even if I wasn't doing the crossword puzzle i probably wouldn't have caught them, but what the hell, all I am good for is to walk around and make people put their snacks away in the library but more realistically to signal to them that once i leave the room snack time begins since i won't be back for a while.
what the hell can I do except think and wonder all the time?

one of the high points of my day:
we are driving home in the crime-stopping-officer-mobile and a girl runs towards and yells "i fucking hate you guys!" and then proceeds to give us both her middle fingers. As she starts to walk away, we back up and one of my co-workers told her she was fat. Then we drove off.