An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide addresses a host of critical issues germane to the scorched earth/genocidal actions which the Sudanese Government has engaged in between 2003 and today (November 2010). The interviewees, all of whom were violently forced from their land, villages, and homes, are an eclectic group: the young and the old, men and women, the uneducated and the highly educated, common citizens, and leaders (sheiks and umdas ). Their personal stories place a human face on a crisis that has resulted in the genocide of some two hundred thousand people and the deaths of scores of thousands due to what has been deemed “genocide by attrition”—the withholding of medical attention and humanitarian assistance to the black Africans (as the people refer to themselves and as they are referred to by Government of Sudan troops and the Janjaweed , or Arab militia) as they fled and sought shelter in roughshod internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the forbidding deserts and mountains of Darfur. (For a detailed explanation of the Darfur crisis, see the “Historical Overview” in this book.)