Here are two pieces on Khartoum's support for the Arab militias that are brutalizing the people of Darfur. A defector tells the BBC that the Janjaweed take orders directly from the Sudanese government.
"The Janjaweed don't make decisions. The orders always come from the government," he said. "They gave us orders, and they say that after we are trained they will give us guns and ammunition." "Ali" - who is now seeking asylum in Britain - said the men who had trained them were wearing the uniforms of the Sudanese military, adding that Interior Minister Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hussein was a "regular visitor". The former fighter said the majority of the victims were civilians, mostly women, and also talked of "many rapes" committed by the Janjaweed. "Whenever we go into a village and find resistance we kill everyone," he said, but denied that he personally killed or raped civilians.
The International Herald Tribune also reports on Khartoum's use of the Arab militias to do its dirty work:
The attitudes and general despondency of the Sudanese troops held here underscore why Sudan, despite its large military, well supplied by arms bought from China with Sudan's growing oil wealth, has relied primarily on brutal Arab militias to carry out its grim counterinsurgency campaign against the rebels in Darfur. It was a strategy Sudan perfected in its 20-year civil war in the south, where it used Arab tribal militias as a paramilitary force. The militias terrorized Southern Sudan, razing villages, raping women and kidnapping children. The militias in Darfur, known as the janjaweed, have carried out a similar campaign.
What to do? So far, the Arab League isn't interested in doing much. The same holds for China and Russia. But Senators Dole and McCain have some ideas and so do the folks at the International Crisis Group.