Dead ends in Darfur

With Sudan blocking outside intervention, crisis in its western province is in a precarious, and deadly, stalemate | Mindy Belz

In southern Darfur, it's harvest season. The donkey carts pass on gullied red-clay roads laden with grasses for animal feed, dura to sell in the market, or water cans. In the field women, men, and older children swing machetes or hand-hoes in wide, rhythmic arcs above brittle stalks of sorghum and rows of maize or millet.

In the United States harvest traditionally ushers in a time of thanksgiving. But in Darfur where can one go to find cause for celebration? More than three years after fierce militias known as janjaweed — "armed horsemen"—began raiding villages, raping women, killing children, and torching property, the world is little closer to a lasting solution to what many call the world's worst humanitarian crisis. And while harvests and relative bounty may come, the killings, the raids, and the suffering continue.