The Arab Muslims saw themselves as slave masters, whilst they looked down on black Africans as slaves. The Darfur area was already suffering from desertification leading to diminishing arable land on which to scratch out a living, and the indigenous ethnic groups there (the Fur, the Zaghawa and the Masalit) found themselves being increasingly sidelined and encroached upon by Muslim Arabs.

In February 2003 the tensions erupted into armed conflict when the Sudan Liberation Army together with other groups took up arms against the government in an attempt to repel Muslim Arabs and seek recognition of the area as an equal and valued partner within Sudan, if not an independent state.

The current conflict in Darfur is estimated to have taken the lives of between 200-300,000 people with nearly five million out of the area's population of 6.2 million affected by the troubles. Just a few years ago a further 310,000 were displaced bringing the known total to nearly three million.  The background to the conflict is developed in greater detail in this video by a humanitarian aid worker who spend time in Darfur.