Darfur Is Tangled Up In Statistics

Darfur Is Tangled Up In Statistics

Had they been short on rally slogans, Sudan activists behind last weekend's Global Darfur Day could have tapped Benjamin Disraeli's classification of the three kinds of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics.

A new study published Sept. 15 in the journal Science says the U.S. State Department's death toll estimates for Darfur, released last year, underestimated the count by "hundreds of thousands" of lives.

The new study is no news flash for Sudan watchers who have tracked the three-year-old conflict between government-backed militia and rebel groups in western Sudan.

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