More than oil, water. Southern Sudan sits on top of some large aquifer. In the Maghribi and Sahari regions, from Nubia to Chad and Libya all the way to Mauritania, water is pretty damn important and matches or exceeds oil in importance in some political calculation.
Next point, media and activist casual misrepresentation of this conflict and ethnic cleansing campaign as a racial and not just ethnic conflict, the "Arabs" in question in these militias are Black.
Of course here we do run into a question of defining race, the social construction of "racial identity". By any definition both sides are "black", or "aswad", hence the name of the country and region "Bilad al-Sudan" or "land of the Blacks". Instead, just as elsewhere in Africa, a real issue is a matter of tribe, language, and ethnic/cultural divides. It's not a racial genocide its an ethnic genocide, or ethnic cleansing campaign (your choice of terms).
My $0.04.
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