Why, after all the money, tough rhetoric and skilled negotiators that the U.S. has applied to the conflict in Darfur, aren't we getting anywhere? This thing has been on slow boil for years. I've been trying to keep up with the clash of interests as they metastasize again and again into new and dangerous versions of conflict, but the political landscape in Darfur is truly byzantine.

The Washington Post's piece today, "A Wide-Open Battle For Power in Darfur," helped me to re-envision that landscape. The four or five rebel factions that were in play during the peace talks two years ago have splintered into several dozen competing factions, largely because the stakes--money, materiel, power--are higher now that Darfur is on the world map and incorporated into the budgets of well-off governents under pressure to do something to help the region.

To put it bluntly, this new level of complexity is of our own making. The unintended consequences of international attention can be bizarre. Remember the nefarious Janjaweed, the Arab raiders pillaging by proxy for the Sudanese government? Some of them have switched sides, or at least ended their implicit partnership with Khartoum:

The Sudanese government has little need for military action, as Darfur is at war with itself.

Arab tribes are fighting one another over land, cows and other spoils of war. Disillusioned Janjaweed militiamen, abandoned by the government, have joined rebels and government soldiers in the business of looting, carjacking and petty shakedowns.

"Everybody is guilty," said Col. Augustine Agundu, chairman of the peacekeeping mission's cease-fire commission, who reserved special wrath for the rebels. "Emancipation, ending discrimination, that was their drive at the beginning, whereas today they don't know what they want."

The peacekeeping mission is in the middle of it all, saddled with the high expectations of advocacy groups that simply want the conflict to end.

The international community, such as it is, still has a "responsibility to protect." But what does that mean? Advocates need to get together with program implementers and negotiators and think through the incentives for all parties pretty carefully. We've demanded change, and change is what we have, but Darfur still befuddles.