Nowadays it doesn't seem all too uncommon to hear about conflict in other countries when you turn on the television. Whether it's the war in Iraq or nuclear sanctions on Iran the media seems to always have its focus on something negative. However, one country I hadn't heard about until recently was the country of Darfur. Darfur has been going through a period of genocide and humanitarian violence since 2003 due to a number of different reasons including uncontrollable population growth, desertification, and most importantly religion. The reason why we haven't too much about Darfur until recently is because the African governments involved have kept us all in the dark, the government in my opinion is the root of the problem, a problem that can only be solved if they are more open with their people. In addition, Darfur needs to settle its religious differences or it will get nowhere
Among the many causes of conflict in Darfur, the two most important are the inequality between the inner parts and outer parts of the country, and years of odd changes in the environment causing the living conditions to be even more stressful for the already poor people of Darfur. All the tension built up over about 2 decades until it finally boiled over. This is when the real conflict started. It began when 2 rebel groups accused the government of Sudan of oppressing non-Arabs. The rebel forces eventually joined forces and proved too much for the Sudanese government. The rebel forces seized many supplies and continued raiding small villages. The government needed to change their strategy.
The government called for disarmament of the rebel militias. This turned out to be only a temporary solution. The fighting then continued and a group of 18,000 peace keepers had to be brought in. In August 2006 the UN proposed bringing 20.000 Sudanese troops to protect Darfur but they rejected. It was reported that by this time that hundreds of women had been beaten and gang raped around refugee camps. The Sudanese Government still refused to bring troops to the region, the proposed UN peacekeeping force was strongly opposed by many regions around the country and eventually failed to materialize. By this time the whole region seemed to be heading in the same direction as Iraq. After some control was regained, the UN proposed a cease-fire in the region. This was once again, only a temporary solution. In addition to the rebel groups the Sudanese government also has to deal with a border country by the name Of Chad, a peace agreement was signed in order to ease some of the regions tensions. This seemed to be a step in the right direction because the violence throughout the whole region has decreased since then and peace talks are becoming more frequent. Even though there seems to be a shot at peace the fact still remains that over 400,000 people have died as a result of the conflict.
In my opinion, the only way to resolve the conflict is to get the governments more involved. They need to be more open with the people and they also need to find a way to deal with the rebels more efficiently. We also need to get a lot more international aid. We need countries to just swallow their pride. Even if they are not in full agreement on many issues I'm sure even just a simple compromise would be huge when you're dealing with people as stubborn as this.
