The Violence Continues During Darfur Ceasefire

Somewhere in the harsh landscape around the North Darfur town of Kutum, some 30,000 people have effectively vanished. It's a semi-arid area that hovers between desert and savannah, with thorn trees and grass and dry riverbeds that fill in the brief rainy season with just enough water to support either the pastoralists, like the Arab nomads known here as the Janjaweed, or the agriculturalists, who are the majority of the Darfur population, non-Arab Africans from a variety of tribes.

This isn't a surprise to anyone following the situation in Darfur. The peacekeepers aren't going to interfere based on their rules of engagement and the area involved is such that they can't even bring the whole region into their purview.

The janjaweed are continuing their rampaging through Darfur, complicit with Khartoum. The usual suspects proclaimed that there was a ceasefire deal that would put an end to the violence, but all that paper and talk was just that - paper and talk. The action on the ground speaks far more loudly.