The conflict erupted in Darfur in 2003 when two domestic rebel groups launched an attack against National Islamic Front in Darfur. The two opposing groups representing in Sudan were the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement . About 400 thousand people have died in the conflict, and a further 2 to 3 million have become refugees or internally displaced persons because of the warfare. The political history of Sudan is a history of uprisings and civil wars, superimposed on each other and rooted deep into the legacy of the colonial rule policies. The British administration entrenched the rhetoric of race and politicised racial identification in Sudan. It manipulated tribalism and imposed a political hierarchy between the tribes of Darfur. The British rule transformed "the Arab and the Africans from flexible cultural identities to rigid political identities". It intended to separate Arab from non-Arab and establish order. The British administration followed the policy of economic inequality between the central Sudan Arabs and peripheral Sudan. It concentrated the development and economic activities in one part of the country, the northern part but neglected the peripheral part notably the south and Darfur. The northern region enjoyed a privileged status as they were given access to education and power, while the colonial administration introduced Closed Districts Ordinance for Darfur and South. After independence and in the mid-eighties particularly, Darfur suffered from severe drought, causing a conflict between the Arab pastoralists and the African agriculturalist groups. Due to the deteriorating economic situation, the government could do nothing to help them. The economy of Sudan deteriorated due to the legacy of British colonialism notably the problem in the south, the government's rigid foreign policy, weak state institutions and economic embargo. All these factors depleted the state's financial resources and deprived the state, especially the periphery from development. The conflict system was facilitated by many factors such as power vacuums in hinterlands, the presence of trans-border ethnic groups because of colonialisms' arbitrary division, the flow of weapons through Chad wars and Chad-Libya war and external intervention.