What were the origins of the conflict in Darfur and why is it continueing?

Answer 1

Well there has been a period of civil war in Sudan for nearly 20 years. The concentrated genocide in Darfur however did not start happening until February 2003. It is a genocide definitely targeted at those agains Al-Bashir's government and the Black African population versus the African Muslim population (although both sides are majority Muslim). It continues because governments around the world have always been hesitant to intervene on soley humanitarian reasons (read "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" by Samantha Power) - and Sudan itself will not allow the UN into the region because they see it as a vast western conspiracy (so they say).

The starting point of the conflict in the Darfur region is typically said to be 26 February 2003, when a group calling itself the Darfur Liberation Front (DLF) publicly claimed credit for an attack on Golo, the headquarters of Jebel Marra District. The Sudanese government had been aware of a unified rebel movement since an attack on the Golo police station in June 2002. It should be noted that nearly all of the residents of Darfur are Muslim, as are the Janjaweed and the government leaders in Khartoum.

On 25 March, the rebels seized the garrison town of Tine along the Chadian border, seizing large quantities of supplies and arms. Despite a threat by President Omar al-Bashir to "unleash" the army, the military had little in reserve. The army was already deployed both to the south, where the Second Sudanese Civil War was drawing to an end, and the east, where rebels sponsored by Eritrea were threatening the newly constructed pipeline from the central oilfields to Port Sudan. The rebel tactic of hit-and-run raids using Toyota Land Cruisers to speed across the semi-desert region proved almost impossible for the army, untrained in desert operations, to counter. However, its aerial bombardment of rebel positions on the mountain was devastating.

At 5:30 am on 25 April 2003, a joint Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and JEM force in 33 Land Cruisers entered al-Fashir and attacked the sleeping garrison. In the next four hours, four Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships, according to the government, (seven according to the rebels) were destroyed on the ground, 75 soldiers, pilots and technicians were killed and 32 were captured, including the commander of the air base, a Major General. The rebels lost nine. The success of the raid was unprecedented in Sudan; in the 20 years of the war in the south, the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had never carried out such an operation.

At this point the government changed its strategy. Given that the army was being consistently defeated, the war effort depended on three elements: Military Intelligence, the air force, and the Janjaweed, armed Baggara herders whom the government had begun directing in repression of a Masalit uprising in 1996-1999. The Janjaweed were put at the center of the new counter-insurgency strategy. Military resources were poured into Darfur and the Janjaweed were outfitted as a paramilitary force, complete with communication equipment and some artillery. The probable results of such a strategy were clear to the military planners; similar strategies undertaken in the Nuba Mountains and around the southern oil fields during the previous decade had resulted in massive human rights violations and forced displacements.

The better-armed Janjaweed quickly gained the upper hand. By the spring of 2004, several thousand people — mostly from the non-Arab population — had been killed and as many as a million more had been driven from their homes, causing a major humanitarian crisis in the region.

Answer 2

See, it goes something like this: the president of Darfur wants to eliminate the population for some reason, so he starts making problems. He wants to get almost everyone dead, so the problem is still happening.