The International Crisis Group is warning 350,000 people may die in the Darfur region of the Sudan unless the world community helps avert a humanitarian crisis there. Over the past year, Arab militias backed by the Sudanese government have forced more than one million black Christian Africans to flee their homes. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in fighting. In one attack this weekend, villagers told Reuters that Arab militias killed 56 people. Earlier this month Human Rights Watch accused Sudan of committing “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity. Oxfam is warning that food and fresh water levels are becoming dangerously low. In a recent article in the Boston Globe former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake wrote “In eerie similarity to 1994 Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council, not wanting to disrupt ongoing peace efforts, cannot even muster a statement of condemnation —-— while the Sudanese government flouts the already agreed cease-fire, delays at the negotiating table, starves the displaced, and continues to support its killer militias.” This comes at a time that the Bush administration appears to be heading toward normalizing relations with the Sudanese government. Last week Sudan was taken off the State Department’s list of nations considered uncooperative in the so-called war on terror. It remains on the list of sponsors of state terrorism.