U.S. Involvement in the Crisis in Darfur

U.S. Involvement in the Crisis in Darfur Since the end of the Cold War, Africa has been a continent rife with violence mainly in the form of civil war. This can be attributed greatly to the halt of economic and political progress after the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, no longer needed to compete in Africa. Now that the rivalry has subsided neither country has any real reasons, economic or political, to have as large of a presence in the Post-Cold War era. Not only do these countries receive significantly less aid during this period of history, the governments in the continent have lost some of the already little control they had by no longer being able to pit Washington and Moscow against each other (Perlez, 1992). In July of 2003 Amnesty International first made reports on the conflict in Darfur, followed by International Crisis Group in December. Since this time the area has received a large amount of attention from the international community. Following the massive amount of media coverage, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila named Darfur the "world's greatest humanitarian crisis." While there is an agreement of the international community that ethnic groups have been targeted and that crimes against humanity have occurred, there has been debate about whether genocide has or has not occurred, and it is this debate that the United States and the United Nations disagree on, which will be described later in greater detail after a brief history of the conflict. On one side of the war is the Janjaweed militia aided by the Sudanese military. The Janjaweed is composed mainly of Arab Abbala tribes of the north Rezeigat region, who are traditionally camel-herding nomads. The other side is made up of different rebel groups such as the Sudan Liberation Army (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), both of which come mainly from the non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic