On The Third Hand

‘They killed my whole family and then took me away and made me their slave’

… Since February, millions of innocent civilians have been caught up in civil war as the Janjaweed work to rid the Darfur region of its 80 black tribes, in the name of suppressing the rebels.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, villages have been emptied, and traumatised refugees speak of mass murder and rape, of wells being poisoned with the bodies of dead children.
An estimated one million people - one in seven of the Darfur population - have been driven from their homes by the Janjaweed, the one-time nomadic Arab shepherds who have been forcing their way south as the Sahara consumes their traditional grazing lands.
…
Last week, senior African diplomats told The Sunday Telegraph that the Arab-dominated and undemocratic Sudanese government was using hunger as a weapon to defeat the rebellion.
Throughout Darfur, residents believe that the government is attempting to split the country along religious and racial lines to hang on to power.
While Khartoum denies ethnic cleansing, it would rather that its progress against the 20,000 rebels went unreported, imposing a media blackout that has lasted more than a year.<