Darfur: Inside the Crisis

It’s been three years and three months since the war erupted in Darfur, which is an isolated region in Western Sudan. As many as 400,000 people have died in the region and as many as three million people have been left homeless. The United Nations has labeled the conflict one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Congress and President Bush have declared the Darfur killings to be genocide. On May 5th the Sudan government and only one of three rebel groups signed a U.S-brokered peace agreement but experts say the plan is rife with problems and it is unclear if the plan will be effective at all. The cease-fire officially went into effect last Monday. The African Union, which brokered the deal held a meeting today of its Peace and Security Council in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to try to get the other two rebel groups to sign the agreement.

* Tina Susman, Newsday correspondent who recently spent 5 weeks in the region looking at the devastation caused by the war. Her series of reports titled, “Darfur: Inside the Crisis” began running in Newsday on Sunday.

* Adam El Nor Mohammad, Secretary of Public Service for the Sudan Liberation Movement, known as the SLM. The SLM is split into two factions – one of which signed a May 5th peace accord and one which rejected the deal.

* Abdullahi Eltom, senior Justice and Equality Movement member in charge of strategic planning and training. He participated in the most recent peace talks in Abuja. JEM is one of the main rebel groups that opposed the peace deal.

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