For the past two years the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), an inter-African military force of 7,500 men, has been deployed in Darfur. The UN and the African Union (AU) have been powerless in the face of this disaster, producing only symbolic measures and stalling tactics. In reality, the Sudanese government is trying to prevent the fighters from holding a congress that would unify their movement and enable them to start negotiations with the support of the international community ( 3). The Islamic government in Khartoum justifies frequent air raids by claiming their victims are rebels who refused to sign the Abuja “peace” treaty in Nigeria on 5 May 2006 ( 2). Twelve aid workers were killed during massacres and five others have disappeared. Aid workers from the United Nations and NGOs have had to move camps 31 times to escape attacks, although this did not prevent the arrest of several aid workers on 19 January in Nyala they were beaten with rifle butts by the Sudanese police. The conflict has left 400,000 dead in four years. Two million people have fled Darfur in northwest Sudan since 2003, 250,000 of them since last August ( 1), and the resources of neighbouring Chad are suffering from the strain of 250,000 refugees.
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