Struggle for power at the heart of crisis in Darfur

Since early in 2003 the government of Sudan has been involved in an armed struggle with rebel groups inside its own country and millions of its civilians have been caught in the crossfire. The government forces, known as the Janjaweed, have been fighting it out with two groups mainly. The first group is called the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA or also SLM) and the Justice and equality movement (JEM). During this struggle the Janjaweed have undertaken a policy of "Ethnic Cleansing" and have been attacking the civilians in the section of Sudan known as Darfur because those civilians happen to be of the same ethnic group as the rebels. The numbers of victims involved is staggering. It is estimated that in addition to the over 400,000 that have been killed there have been hundreds of thousands raped and somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.2 million who have been burned out of their homes and displaced and now are living in make shift refugee camps in and around the region and also in The neighboring country of Chad. An additional 2 million civilians are considered "Conflict Affected" and are in danger of starvation because their local economy has collapsed due to the fighting.
The U.N. is attempting to finally respond with a force of about 26,000 peace keepers but here too there are some problems. They will only be allowed into Sudan if they are given permission to do so by the Sudanese government. They are worried about their sovereignty. They have accused both the Governments of the U.S. and Britain of having imperialistic designs on Sudan. They are also insisting the peacekeeping force be made up of predominantly African peacekeepers. They do not want white soldiers making up the bulk of this force. The U.N. is having some difficulty meeting this request because most African Countries lack the resouces needed to get up a force of that size and deploy it. Estimates are that the force will begin to be put on the ground in early to mid Decenmber of 2007. It wont be at full strength in the beginning. It will start to deploy at about 9000 men and slowly increase in number as the new year comes in. If all goes smoothly this may begin to quell the violence going on there but many observers are not overly optimistic.