Al Jazeera asked its readers quite a good question recently. One worth repeating here at PoliGazette:

Sudanese government troops have moved in to control rebel strongholds in North Darfur state after two days of heavy fighting. Assaults on rebels’ positions began on Saturday, fighters from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) have said. How can further violence be avoided in Darfur? What should be done to ensure stability in Sudan’s troubled region? Is there hope for peace in Darfur?

You can find more information about Darfur at the following links:
1. Here (Reuters: thousands flee fighting)
2. Here (Daily Nation: Darfur rebels to get U.S. aid)
3. < a href=”http://appablog.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/darfur-unamid-daily-media-brief-2008-09-15/”>Here (UNAMID report on the situation in Darfur)
4. Here (WikiPedia: article about the conflict in Darfur)

From the last link a summary:

The War in Darfur is a military conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Unlike the Second Sudanese Civil War, the current lines of conflict are seen to be ethnic and tribal, rather than religious.[1] One side of the armed conflict is composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited mostly from the Arab Abbala tribes of the northern Rizeigat, camel-herding nomads. The other side comprises a variety of rebel groups, notably the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, recruited primarily from the land-tilling non-Arab Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided money and assistance to the militia and has participated in joint attacks targeting the tribes from which the rebels draw support.[2][3] The conflict began in February 2003.
The combination of decades of drought, desertification, and overpopulation are among the causes of the Darfur conflict, because the Baggara nomads searching for water have to take their livestock further south, to land mainly occupied by Black African farming communities.[4]
There are many casualty estimates most concurring on a range within the hundreds of thousands of people. The United Nations estimates that the conflict has left as many as 400,000 dead from violence and disease.[5] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 have died each year because of government attacks. Most non-governmental organizations use 200,000 to more than 400,000; the latter is a figure from the Coalition for International Justice.[6] Sudan’s government claims that over 9,000 people have been killed, although this figure is seen as a gross underestimate.[7][8] As many as 2.5 million are thought to have been displaced as of October 2006. [9] (see Mortality Figures section, below).

The Sudanese government has suppressed information by jailing and killing witnesses since 2004 and tampered with evidence such as mass graves to eliminate their forensic value.[10][11][12] In addition, by obstructing and arresting journalists, the Sudanese government has been able to obscure much of what has gone on.[13][14][15][16] The United States government has described it as genocide,[17] although the UN has stated it is not genocide [18](see List of declarations of genocide in Darfur). In March 2007 the UN mission accused Sudan’s government of orchestrating and taking part in “gross violations” in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there. After fighting stopped in July and August, on 31 August 2006, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 1706 which called for a new 20,600-troop UN peacekeeping force called UNAMID to supplant or supplement a poorly funded and ill-equipped 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The next day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region.
On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC), filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC’s prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir “masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part” three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. The ICC’s prosecutor for Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is expected within months to ask a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.

So, how can further violence be avoided in Darfur? What should be done to ensure stability in Sudan’s troubled region? Is there hope for peace in Darfur?