The Darfur conflict's deadly gold rush

The Darfur conflict's deadly gold rush

Reuters | Oct 9, 2013, 06.25 AM IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/The-Darfur-conflicts-deadly-gold-rush/articleshow/23765892.cms

KHARTOUM: With its scrubland, unpaved roads and mud brick huts, the Jebel Amer area in Darfur, western Sudan, can look like a poor and desolate place. Under the ground, though, lies something sought by people everywhere: gold.

In the past year or so the precious metal has begun to alter the nature of the decade-old conflict in Darfur, transforming it from an ethnic and political fight to one that, at least in part, is over precious metal.

Darfur

Save Darfur Coalition is a merged organization with the Genocide Intervention Network.

Note: Joan R. Platt was a director at the Genocide Intervention Network, is a director at the Save Darfur Coalition, and a director at the Human Rights Watch.

Open Society Foundations was a funder for the Human Rights Watch.

George Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and was a benefactor for the Human Rights Watch.

Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Human Rights Watch.

Barbra Streisand Foundation was a funder for the Human Rights Watch.