Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster

Images of the genocide in Darfur have shocked the Western world: Upwards of 300,000 of its inhabitants have died, and another 2.5 million have become refugees. Those affected by the violence are estimated at almost 4 million, 700,000 of whom are now beyond the reach of humanitarian assistance. These are staggering numbers, and the fractious insurgent groups involved— Islamist Arab tribal militias against Christian black Africans and other militias made up of deserters of the Chad Army—were and still are supported to kill, rob, and terrorize by the governments of the neighboring states of the Sudan, Chad, and Libya. These are the consequences of a decades-long war, as J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins explained in their earlier book, Africa’s Thirty Years War: Libya, Chad, and the Sudan, 1963–1993. The Long Road to Disaster in Darfur updates this study and covers the events of the last thirteen years.