All Darfuris are Muslim and black. The “African” and “Arab” distinctions pertain more to lifestyle and livelihood categories. Comprising 35% of the population are the “Arabs” who are nomadic herders. The remaining 65% of the people in Darfur, the “Africans,” are farmers. These two groups used to have coexisted on the land even under the conditions of environmental calamity, desertification, and high population growth. The approximately 6 million inhabitants of Darfur are among the poorest in Africa.

In 2003, the Sudanese government gave arms to some “Arab” clans and incited them to attack “African” villages. The government’s motivation was to control the diminishing land and water resources.

Five years later, the United Nations estimates that nearly 400,000 people have died from violence and disease, and over 2.5 million have been displaced. There have been countless aerial bombardments. Entire villages have been razed to the ground. Arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial summary executions have come wholesale. Torture, abductions, rape, and other forms of sexual violence have been commonplace. Livelihoods have been rendered nil.

Sudan persists in its scorched earth policy against the Darfur farmers. The trouble has crossed over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. The United States has dubbed it the Darfur Genocide, while other parties contend that it is nothing but ethnic wars among tribes.

International diplomacy has failed, with promises of conflict-resolution and threats against President al-Bashir in his Khartoum regime remaining unfulfilled. With the US Fiscal Year 2008 budget, there is a projected $186 million shortfall for Darfur peacekeeping, and a $6 billion shortfall for America’s core humanitarian assistance. The monetary gap is seen to have grave impact on international peacekeeping and aid efforts, negatively affecting millions of Darfuris.

For now, China continues to remain as the Sudanese government’s primary supplier of weapons and fighter jets, in its attempt to obtain oil and gas in the country. China also happens to be Sudan’s largest trade and foreign investment partner.

Some have raised their faces to heaven, asking if the nightmare in Darfur is going to end – and what will it take for it to end.

So long as war is a business, there will always be reasons to go to war.

In the meantime, one of the more public faces of the advocacy to end the conflict in Darfur US actor George Clooney says in an interview published Saturday in Spain, “Boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games to try to pressure China into taking action to stop the violence in Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur would be “excessive.”

Links: Genocide Intervention, Independent, Save Darfur, Yahoo News