from ZNet (UK Independent) The first sign is the ominous drone of a plane. Ageing Russian Antonovs sweep over the remote Sudanese village, dispatching their deadly payload of crude barrel bombs. They explode among the straw-roofed huts, sending terrified families scurrying for safety - but there is none. Next comes the Janjaweed, a fearsome Arab militia mounted on camels and horses, and armed with AK-47 rifles and whips. They murder the men and boys of fighting age, gang-rape the women - sometimes in front of their families - and burn the houses. The villagers' cattle are stolen, their modest possessions carted off.

from Middle East Report Online At last, the catastrophe in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, a quarter of whose six million people are now displaced by war and whose lives are at serious risk, has gained some international attention. In July, Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited Darfuri refugee camps to pressure the regime in Khartoum into stopping what has become a frenzy of destruction. Their pressure has so far failed. Moreover, the promises of humanitarian aid for internally displaced and refuge-seeking Darfuris come desperately late. As the Sudanese government places obstacles in the way of the international relief organizations, the death toll from deliberate, war-induced famine is headed for the hundreds of thousands.

During late June 2006 in the small village of Bahai in northeast Chad, Osman Boush, an anti-government fighter from Sudan’s western Darfur region, enjoyed moments of peace, letting the day pass over cups of tea and the hum of the radio before he crossed the border back into the land he has been fighting for over the last three years. In the village’s market—a collection of hovels made out of thick layers of tarp and wood—his conversations drifted from world politics to the well being of his family to the status of the revolution in Darfur.