Sudan ethnic cleansing.

For eighteen years, Eric Diek lived a modest life in Dafur, Western Sudan. He raised his family of five by selling millet from his five acre piece of land. But everything changed for him one Tuesday in 2003. In broad daylight, a gang of heavily armed men on horseback invaded his village. They killed people--including Diek's two sons--looted property and burned down farms and houses.

"The world came to an end for me. Now I have nothing. Not even a country to call home," Diek who now lives in Nairobi, Kenya as a refugee says in tears.

Diek is one of the thousands of Sudanese who have fled their country to escape from what human rights organizations say is systematic ethnic cleansing. The gang which attacked his village was the Janjawid, an Arab-Muslim militia which has been killing non-Muslim tribes in Dafur.

The United Nations has described the situation in Dafur as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. It estimates that about 800,000 people have been displaced, fleeing their farms to escape from the killings. Around 160,000 have crossed the border to neighbouring Chad, where they are living in pathetic conditions with inadequate food and vulnerable to disease.

"We have a big crisis in our hands. A big famine looms in the midst of the ongoing violence. The international community must act fast to stop an escalation of the situation," says Pierre Sou Ngadoy, an official of Caritas Chad. Caritas Chad is part of Caritas International, a group of 162 Catholic humanitarian organizations operating around the world. Caritas Chad has been collaborating with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to assist the people who are fleeing Sudan. It runs three of the six camps which have been set up for the refugees. The head of Caritas International, Duncan Maclaren, has already warned that aid needs to be delivered more swiftly for the refugees since they will face a life or death situation once the rains come and the roads are blocked.

"While we are doing everything we can to help these people, we are of the view that the best way to solve the problem would be to stop the cause of the exodus of people across the border," says Ngadoy.

Stopping the cause of the exodus means stopping the Janjawid from perpetrating their murderous violence on the non-Muslim tribes of Dafur. That task can only be handled by the militia. Sudanese government by cracking down on the. But the government stands accused of complicity in the violence.

"The Janjawid operate with support of the government," says Fr. Hillary Boma, a Catholic priest. He says that victims of the raids often say that the gangs are accompanied by government security forces.

"The international community failed Rwanda by not intervening to stop the massacre of a million people when the orgy of ethnic cleansing began. It must not repeat the same mistake with Sudan. Something should be done to stop these senseless killings," says Fr. Boma.

Sudan, with a population of 37 million people, is the largest country in Africa. It is a former colony of Britain, from which it gained independence in 1956. About half of its people are Arabic-Muslim. These occupy the northern part of the country while the south is occupied by Black Africans, some of whom are Christian while others follow indigenous African religions. This ethnic and religious diversity has caused tension in the country from as early as during British colonial rule. But open hostility erupted in 1983 when the people of the south took up arms in a war of self determination. They formed the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to fight against the Muslim-dominated government's policy of forced Islamisation. The war has caused a million deaths, massive displacement and high levels of poverty.

The Sudanese government has been accused of perpetrating gross human rights abuses against its people throughout the period of war. The people of Southern Sudan say that it arms and supports Arab-Muslim militia that have been raiding villages in the region to capture people as slaves. A Christian organization, Christian Solidarity International, has been trying to end slavery by buying back the slaves from their Arab captors. It says that since 1995, it has redeemed 60,000 slaves.

For the last two years SPLA and the government have been negotiating for an end to the war. They have signed six peace protocols to map out a power-sharing formula, and a final peace deal is expected to be signed when the talks resume in Kenya on June 22.

Ironically, it is the prospect of the peace deal that seems to have lulled the international community into silence regarding the atrocities being committed in Dafur. Major powers who are pushing for a quick end to the war seem to be shying off from pushing the Sudanese government too hard on its human rights record lest it turns its back on the peace negotiations.

"The situation in Dafur is critical and the country requires compassion from the world. The Sudanese government must be reminded by other countries that it has a responsibility to protect the lives of all its citizens regardless of their ethnicity or religion. History has shown that despotic regimes only act when faced with international condemnation," says Mvume Dandala, Secretary General of the All Africa Council of Churches (AACC). The Council has been lobbying governments to come to the rescue of the suffering people of Dafur.

International indifference to the crisis in Dafur is partly prompted by the changing fortunes of Sudan in the international political power game. The United States, which had for many years listed Sudan, which once harboured Osama Bin Laden, as a sponsor of terrorism has now removed it from that list, though it maintains sanctions. It now categorizes it in the list of countries which are co-operating in its "war on terror". The desire by Washington to enlist Sudan in the anti-terror war means that the Bush administration has to tread slowly when putting pressure on the country's human rights record.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that within Africa itself, there is lack of strong desire to censure the Sudanese government over the Dafur crisis. Last month the African Block in the UN Commission on Human Rights rejected a strongly worded motion on human rights in Dafur and only accepted a mildly worded one. They elected Sudan to the Commission. The US walked out, saying it was perplexed that the African group had submitted the candidacy of a country that massacred its own people in Dafur.

Last week, there was pomp and fanfare in Rumbek in Southern Sudan when John Garang, SPLA's Chairman, made a homecoming to announce the imminent end of war. But even as the international community awaits the formal end of the war after the final peace deal is signed, it still has to keep a close look at the happenings in Dafur. Only a speedy intervention will prevent the ethnic cleansing from escalating into a Rwanda-like situation.

David Karanja is a novelist and journalist in Nairobi, Kenya. He has been a columnist for Daily News of Zimbabwe. He is currently the editor of Story, a literary magazine in Nairobi.