In the remote Darfur region of western Sudan, a human disaster is accelerating amid uncontrolled violence. The United Nations' undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs has called it probably "the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophe." Doctors Without Borders has observed "catastrophic mortality rates." And yet, so far as most of the world is concerned, it isn't even happening.

There have been what Amnesty International calls "horrifying military attacks against civilians" throughout Darfur by the Sudanese government and its militias. The government has sent bombers to attack undefended villages, refugee camps and water wells. The United Nations estimates that 1 million people have been displaced by war and that more than 3 million are affected by armed conflict.

Yet Darfur has remained practically a non-story in international news media. One big reason is the fact that the central government in Khartoum, the National Islamic Front, has allowed no news reporters into the region and has severely restricted humanitarian access, thus preventing observation by aid workers. The war in Darfur is not directly related to Khartoum's 20-year war against the people of southern Sudan. Even so, military pressure from the Darfur insurgency that began a year ago has been instrumental in forcing the regime to commit to peace talks with the south.

But there are now signs that these talks have been viewed by Khartoum only as a way to buy time to crush the insurgency in Darfur, which emerged, inevitably, from many years of abuse and neglect. Despite efforts by the regime to stop it, a widening stream of information is reaching the international community, from tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to Chad (which shares a long border with western Sudan), and according to accounts from within Darfur. Amnesty International has led the way in reporting on Darfur; one of its recent releases speaks authoritatively of countless savage attacks on civilians by Khartoum's regular army, including its crude Antonov bombers, and by its Arab militia allies, called "Janjaweed."

An especially disturbing feature of these attacks is the clear and intensifying racial animus. This has been reported by Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group and various U.N. spokesmen. The words "ethnic cleansing" have been used by U.N. officials and diplomats. This term, which gained currency during the breakup of Yugoslavia, is another description for genocide. But whatever they are called, the terrible realities in Darfur require that we attend to the ways in which people are being destroyed because of who they are, racially and ethnically -- "as such," to cite the key phrase from the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide.

Darfur is home to racially and ethnically distinct tribal groups. Although virtually all are Muslim, generalizations are hard to make. But the Fur, Zaghawa, Masseleit, and other peoples are accurately described as "African," both in a racial sense and in terms of agricultural practice and use of non-Arabic languages. Darfur also has a large population of nomadic Arab tribal groups, and from these Khartoum has drawn its savage "warriors on horseback" -- the Janjaweed -- who are most responsible for attacks on villages and civilians.

The racial animus is clear from scores of chillingly similar interviews with refugees reaching Chad. A young African man who had lost many family members in an attack heard the gunmen say, "You blacks, we're going to exterminate you." Speaking of these relentless attacks, an African tribal leader told the U.N. news service, "I believe this is an elimination of the black race." A refugee reported these words as coming from his attackers: "You are opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are black, you are like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs." An African tribal chief declared that, "The Arabs and the government forces . . . said they wanted to conquer the whole territory and that the blacks did not have a right to remain in the region."

There can be no reasonable skepticism about Khartoum's use of these militias to "destroy, in whole or in part, ethnic or racial groups" -- in short, to commit genocide. Khartoum has so far refused to rein in its Arab militias; has refused to enter into meaningful peace talks with the insurgency groups; and, most disturbingly, has refused to grant unrestricted humanitarian access. The international community has been slow to react to Darfur's catastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. A credible peace forum must be rapidly created. Immediate plans for humanitarian intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidal destruction.

While the genocidal situation in Darfur is tragic, oil may be the real target for those promoting military intervention.

Ten years ago, the world stood idly by as 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered. Today the human destruction unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan could potentially be greater.

Darfur, the war-torn province in western Sudan where a terrible humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding, has yet more awful secrets to divulge.

In addition to 1.2 million displaced people living and dying in refugee camps in the region and across the border in neighbouring Chad, there are hundreds of thousands more struggling to survive in their homes in the vast areas held by the rebel movements fighting against the Khartoum government.

The Darfur war erupted early last year, when two armed movements - the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement - began a rebellion against a government in Khartoum that had neglected their region.

In response, the government mobilized, armed and directed a militia, known as Janjaweed ('rabble' or 'outlaws' in local dialect), using scorched earth, massacre and starvation as counter-insurgency weapons. The UN has described Darfur as 'the world's worst humanitarian crisis'. Recently, the US Congress described it as 'genocide'. The British government is considering sending in 5,000 troops.

To date, 35,000 are already dead. 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes, and many lack water, food and sanitation. Women, and girls as young as 12 have been raped outside of refugee camps. Drinking wells have been poisoned, and entire villages have been destroyed. Without immediate action over 350,000 men, women and children will lose their lives in the next nine months from starvation and disease.

Sudan's 40 million population is 70% Sunni Muslim, 25% indigenous beliefs,and 5% Christian. Tensions in Darfur, in western Sudan, have existed since the 1970s. Forced by drought and scarce resources, the nomadic cattle herders in the north ventured into lands populated by the more settled communities in the south.

Renewed fighting broke out at the very moment when a peace agreement was about to be signed which would have ended 21 years of conflict between the government of Sudan, and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Sudan.

Darfur's tribes rebelled against the government complaining that the Sudan government had failed to develop the area. It is alleged that the rebels, aware of the terms of the proposed peace agreement between the government of Sudan and the SPLA, hoped to strike a favorable deal for themselves.

Southern Darfur, like southern Sudan, is rich in oil. The Chinese National Petroleum Corporation holds the large oil concession in southern Darfur, and Chinese soldiers are alleged to be protecting Chinese oil interests.

It is also alleged that the rebels in southern Darfur are getting weapons from outside Sudan. "UN observers say they have better weapons than the Sudanese army, and are receiving supplies by air," according to Crescent International (UK).

The government of Sudan, after agreeing with UN Secretary General Kofi Anan to a 90-day period to end the conflict, was given 30 days under a UN resolution pushed through by the U.S. and Britain.

Sudan, largely undeveloped, and barely emerging from colonial oppression, has been given a virtually impossible task of pacifying an area the size of France. This may be the pretext for yet another U.S.-British intervention for oil.

In 1996, the U.S. sent nearly $20 million in surplus U.S. military equipment to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to topple the government of Sudan, and it would appear that the U.S. and Britain are now competing with China, Sudan's largest trading partner, for Sudan's oil.

What Sudan, and Darfur in particular, need now are humanitarian assistance - not avarice masquerading as altruism.

Meanwhile, the international community remains largely silent about Uganda.

There the Lord's Resistance Army has killed tens of thousands of people, often mutilating their bodies, displaced more than 1.6 million people in northern Uganda, kidnapped thousands of children, forced many to become soldiers or sex slaves.