Once again the military regime of Khartoum has proved that old habits die-hard. By trying once again to solve the Darfur crisis through the barrel of the gun is a clear indication that Khartoum has learned nothing from the 20 year-old-war it fought against its own citizens in Southern Sudan. Despite agreeing recently that a ceasefire is necessary to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, and despite claiming this week that the "war in Darfur" is over, the regime has stepped up its military operations in the province and with the same token has rejected the invitation to a conference on Darfur proposed by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss non-governmental peace group, to be held February 14 and 15 in Geneva.

While fighting the so-called "insurgents" the Sudanese armed forces and other paramilitary units – the Popular Defence Forces - have simultaneously targeted civilians, allegedly accused of supporting the rebellion. More than 600,000 people have fled from their destroyed villages and have taken refuge in other towns in makeshift camps under trees with almost no food, water or shelter, while more than 100,000 fled to neighbouring Chad. Khartoum announced that major military operations in Darfur are over but villages are still being attacked and burned by the Janjaweed, the Khartoum-backed armed militias, and government Antonov planes continue to bomb indiscriminately villages as near as 60 kilometres from Al Fasher, the capital of Northern Darfur.

A ceasefire negotiated in neighbouring Chad (Abeche 1) seeking to end the conflict collapsed because the government has not kept its part of the deal, i.e. stop all its military operations and especially rein in the Janjaweed. In fact Osman Youssef Kibir, the governor of North Darfur, has admitted that militiamen acting in the name of the government executed civilians in his province, although he denied that the government bore any responsibility for their acts. Last week, the government overrun a number of camps held by the fighters of the Movement for Justice and Equality (MJE), one of the fighting factions in Darfur. Then it turned its wrath against the other faction, the Sudan Liberation Army and has surrounded Jebal Marra, their stronghold, with the full might of its armed forces and its allies.

The situation in Darfur is far from being "under control", as claimed by the Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir. The rebellion will continue as long as Khartoum refuses to acknowledge any political motivation for the unrest in the province, rejects a political solution to the crisis and blaming it instead on "armed criminal gangs and outlaws", who it says are aided by tribes from Chad.

Much of the tension in Darfur results from the same issues that led Southern Sudan to take up arms back in 1983 -- a central government that exploits local resources, imposes its cultural beliefs on the indigenous African population and consistently plays off local tribes and ethnic groups against each other for short-term gains. The Darfur Liberation Front -- which later changed its name to the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) -- took up arms last February because the Khartoum government had "introduced policies of marginalisation, racial discrimination and exploitation that had disrupted the peaceful coexistence between the region's African sedentary and Arab nomad communities". Since the rebellion erupted the province is a war zone, with tremendous suffering inflicted on the civilian population by the army and the armed militias. SLA complains that the government in Khartoum, like all its predecessors, is dominated by the northern Arab elite and has ignored their needs. They argue that Darfur too should be offered a slice of a power-sharing deal and that its natural resources developed for the benefit of the local population. Calling for a separation of state and religion, the SLA/SLM have spelled out their objective "to create a united democratic Sudan" where the unity of the country will ultimately be based on the right to self-determination of the various peoples of Sudan. Also, they are asking for the establishment of an economy and a political system that addresses the uneven development and marginalisation that have plagued the country since independence. Yet these claims have had no effect on the government. It continues refusing to acknowledge the political motivation for the unrest and accuses Eritrea and the Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) of supporting and arming the rebels.

Darfur is the most underdeveloped region in the country and is prone to drought and famines, two factors which have fuelled conflict between nomadic Arab tribes, armed by the government, militias and local African villagers. Libya, who backs the Zaghawa, "a useful long term leverage weapon against N'djamena" according to Al Fazzan, the former Libyan ambassador to Cairo and who is now representing his country in Damascus, has offered to solve Darfur's "tribal dispute" by inviting the Arab herders and pastoralists of Darfur into Libya. There, they will receive new territories, pastures and water points and even the Libyan nationality. Tripoli wants at all costs to unite with Sudan and Egypt and recently Kadhafi has proposed a draft constitution for a tripartite union to form the Golden Triangle, his 35 year-old dream. Sudan may be an oil producer at the rate of 330,000 barrels per day, but the oil bonanza has only begun in 1999. With the exception of the capital, there is practically neither proper health services nor education and no communications infrastructure in the country. Neglected by successive governments, the peripheral regions - Darfur, Kordofan, Nuba Mountains and the Eastern Province – can easily claim to benefit from "sustained UNDERdevelopment".

Parallel to the issues of neglect and underdevelopment, racial discrimination and exploitation have poisoned inter-tribal co-existence. Pastoralism and farming have historically been and remain the most viable economic sectors in the province. It could be argued that land has long been at the heart of many conflicts in Africa, either between the indigenous black African populations and new comers - the case of Zimbabwe – or between farmers and pastoralists like in Darfur. During British colonial rule, the conflicts over pastures and water points were solved through the local tribal administration. Good neighbourhood still prevailing in those days, the pastoralists were allowed to move into the grazing areas with their cattle, sheep and camels, only after farmers had harvested their fields. But at independence, in the rush to modernise the country and move away from "old traditions", the new rulers of Sudan dismantled the local tribal administration and never replaced it. In the early 1980s, as drought and underdevelopment reduced pastures and water resources, the struggle for survival intensified for the nomadic pastoralists. During the 1986-89 premiership of Sadiq Al-Mahdi (Umma Party) the problem resurfaced when the nomadic tribes of the region, commonly known as the Baggara, moved indiscriminately into farming lands. These actions were made possible by a deliberate government policy and with the tacit approval of local government officials. The Baggara were even given weapons to "defend" themselves in case they were attacked by the indigenous farmers. Needless to say that often the weapons were used to take over lands and water points from the indigenous farmers.

Since then, Darfur has been the scene of attacks by armed groups on indigenous farmers. The present government reacted by detaining incommunicado in various prisons around the country, community leaders and alleged critics of its policies in the province. Following unrest in and around Geneina, Northern Darfur (2001) where hundreds of Massaleet were killed and dozens of villages burnt to the ground, Special Courts were established to deal with "murders, armed attacks and banditry". These courts have handed down death sentences and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments – cross amputation, public flogging - after unfair and rushed trials.

Armed conflict and deliberate government strategies have largely been responsible for the long history of wars and of famines in Sudan. The current fighting, primarily along ethnic lines, is the result of that strategy. For almost twenty-five years, famine and scorched earth policy have been regarded as the outcome of a political process of depleting a region from its native population and transferring the resources of the region from the weak – the indigenous people - to the politically strong – Khartoum northern elites.

Various armed militia groups, the Janjaweed in the case of Darfur and the Muraheleen in the Nuba Mountains and in Southern Sudan, have been the vehicles for the regime policies and have been utilized as proxies by Khartoum. Their task is to attack and plunder the people of a given region and take their reward – the war booty - in the form of looted cattle, crops etc. A few years ago, these groups did not have any political agenda in Darfur, but today this has changed. Their political agenda is to assist the government in 'arabising' the region and taking over its natural resources – oil and minerals. The army and the security forces, the specially created Popular Defence Force (PDF), support these militias whose main task is to terrorise and isolate the local populations by forcibly preventing them from working in their fields and looking after their animals. By burning crops and looting cattle, the Janjaweed militias have created and maintained artificial scarcities of food, driving the farmers from their land and pushing them towards urban centres or to the arid, desolate parts of the province. It is true that the raiding, displacement, and asset destruction did not affect all parts of Darfur simultaneously but they have created a situation of extreme instability whereby ordinary economic activities and survival strategies became impossible.

In addition, the nature of inter-tribal clashes in Darfur has been exacerbated by an inflow of arms from neighbouring countries, Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). Tribal groups, militias, dissidents, rebel groups as well as ordinary civilians have easy access to small arms. However, in this particular instance, local politicians as well as the central government have fuelled the rivalry between farming settlers and semi-nomadic communities. Neighbouring states also have interests in Darfur. The Zaghawa of Darfur have helped Idriss Deby gain power in N'djamena in 1990 and with their kin tribe in Chad they form the backbone of Deby's army and security forces. Libya has its own agenda, especially since Col Kadhafi has turned its attention to Africa and to the mineral-rich Sahel countries. In Northern Darfur, bordering Egypt and Libya, lies Jebal 'Aweinat, one of the richest mineral regions of the entire Sahel with foreseeable deposits of uranium, while Southern Darfur is known for its oil, iron ore and copper deposits.

The government has come under serious criticism from humanitarian and human rights organisations about attacks on civilian targets and the deteriorating security situation in Darfur. There is no circumstance that justifies deliberate attacks on civilians or military operations that endanger civilian lives. These are all grave violations of human rights and the laws of war. But since the Sudanese leaders and their friends, especially Libya, which became a member of the UN Human Rights Commission last year, have halted the work of the UN Rapporteur for human rights in Sudan during the Commission annual meeting in Geneva (April 2003) violations of human rights have doubled in Darfur. Already in November 2002, Gerhart Baum, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan, expressed concern over the slow progress achieved by the Khartoum government in redressing the human rights situation. He referred particularly to the negative role of the nomadic Arab tribes (mainly the Baggara and Misariyyah) from which government formed Muraheleen (nomadic) militias, which were deeply implicated in abductions and the targeting of civilians. Yet this has been crippled because civilians' cattle and grain are looted, agriculture land devastated, homes burnt, mills destroyed. Thousands of Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleet are unable to go back to their villages, plant or replace their herds.

During a consultative meeting that took place in Nairobi in January between Vice President Ali Osman Taha and Ahmed Diraige, the leader of the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA) and former governor of Darfur (1980-1983) the government accepted that a ceasefire would be agreed and implemented under the supervision of international monitors, and negotiations opened with the Darfur fighters in order to reach a political settlement to the issue. But it seems that diplomatic and political solutions have been put aside and the government will pursue its military policy.

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* Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media, who currently works as a consultant for Arab African Affairs (London) and writes on a regular basis for AFRICA ANALYSIS (London), for Al Ahram HEBDO Echos Economiques and Al Ahram WEEKLY (Cairo) and contributes to Africa Service BBC WS (London). Published reports include: Religion and Politics in North Africa; The Horn of Africa: Country Risk Analysis; The Nile Waters: Risk Analysis; State and Church in Ethiopia; Policing the Horn of Africa; Religion and Politics in Sudan; Can South Sudan survive as an independent state?

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