Darfur

DARFUR, A SNEAK PEAK AT FUTURE CONFLICTS.

By: Johania Alvarez Quinones.
Facultad de Relaciones Internacionales.
Universidad del Rosario.
Asignatura: Critica a la Prensa Internacional.

As humanity continues to see the effects of climate change around the globe, it is hard not to wonder how these changes might effect us at some future date; will our water disappear as our lakes andrivers dry up? What will happen to our forests and jungles? Will we see the extinctions of more and more species of plants and animals as their habitats change and vanish?
If our world is one giant symbiotic organism, then how does humanity affect it, and how will it eventually affect us?
While wars in the past, including previous wars in Sudan (their first and second civil wars) have oftencentered on resources, territories, ideals and religion they can essentially be summed up as wars of greed or belief, rather than wars of necessity; however, in recent years a conflict has arisen in Northern Africa, which can be directly related to a peoples necessities, rather than a people’s greed
The Darfur region sits along the western edge of Sudan and includes three separate provinces. NorthernDarfur or Shamal Darfur, which borders Libya to the north and Chad to the west, western Darfur or Gharb Darfur, which borders Chad to the west, and Southern Darfur or Janub Darfur, which borders Chad to the west and the Central African Republic the southwest. This region has seen its share of problems throughout Sudanese history.
The current conflict, which began in 2003 (but has roots leadingback many years) stems from an long running dispute between various tribes of the Darfur region, and the centralized government based in the capital city of Khartoum which sits along the Nile in the north eastern part of the country. As the northern regions dry up and become desert, nomads from the area begin to move their herds south onto lands originally used by the non-Arab black Africans of thesouthern regions or Darfur. Rebels from the Darfur region feel that the centralized government has long neglected the area. The once semi-arable grazing land , due to lack of rain, has slowly been reduced to desert, and the once peaceful farmers have been fighting to protect less and less land, and have on more than one occasion found themselves in famine.
In 2003 a rebellion began against theSudanese government, which to this day is mainly dominated by Arabs from the north of Sudan. The rebels accused the Sudanese government of oppressing the non-Arab Sudanese population, and especially neglecting the Darfur region in a time of drought, famine and need. In response to the uprising and the accusations, the government launched aerial raids against the region and funded Arab militants,who carried out ground attacks against the rebels. Cities were razed and entire villages burned in the ensuing conflict; leaving hundreds of thousands dead, and millions displaced, many of whom never found sufficient aid in the refugee camps of Chad and Libya, bringing ever more casualties to the conflict. The Sudanese government and Arab militants have since been accused of committing acts ofgenocide against non-Arab Africans who constitute the majority of the population in the region.
The conflict in Darfur is further complicated by the fact that there is little unity and no emerging leader amongst the rebel tribes who are waging a guerrilla war against more organized and better-funded government supported troops. Long standing tribal rulers and families, refuse to submit to outsiderule and thus many small factions are fighting without a visible leader or spokesperson. This creates a problem for international negotiators when they are trying to bring resolution to the conflict.
It’s apparent that the root cause of the conflict is a lack of food and resources, for an ever growing population (the Sudanese population has increased by nearly one million people per year over the...