Santa Barbarans Seek Solutions to the Darfur Crisis

At least 200,000 people have died in Darfur since fighting broke out more than four years ago. More than 2 million people have been displaced and are struggling to survive in squalid camps inside Darfur or in neighboring Chad. Yet, while the suffering is stark and demands our attention, the roots of the conflict are many and complex.

The Darfur crisis is most often blamed on hostility between the mostly black “African” and “Arab” populations that inhabit the region, hostility that is stoked by the Khartoum government. But the very distinction between “Arab” and “African” is a contested one. The so-called racial differences, such as physical appearance, are minor, with most distinctions due to lifestyle: The so-called Arabs are largely nomadic shepherds, while the so-called Africans are sedentary farmers. Read more >>>>>