Darfur: A short history of a long war

This book describes and analyses the storm clouds that have gathered over Darfur in the last twenty years, and that finally burst in an explosion of violence that the United Naitons called "the worlds worst humanitarian disaster" and the United States called "genocide". For many years the tragedy of Darfur, a wholly Muslim part of Sudan, developed unseen, screened off by the government and overshadowed by the long civil war in the largely non-muslim south. It was only in 2004, as government violence plumbed new depths and terrified survivors began straggling into Chad, that Darfur became impossible to ignore any longer. The war in Darfur has been compared to the genocide in Rwanda ten years earlier, to the North-South war in sudan that was settled just as Darfur erupted, and even to the conflict in Iraq. In Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, we seek to tell Darfur's story in its own terms. We trace rthe local, national and regional origins of the disaster, drawing on reseaqrch we have undertaken, separately and jointly, in Darfur since 1985. This book goes to press at a historic moment for Sydan. On 31 July, John Garang, commander-in-chief of the Sudan People's Liberation Army and for just three weeks First Vice President in a new Government of National Unity, died in a helicopter crash.