A week before President Bush heads to Africa, violence in Kenya and an attempted coup in Chad highlight the shortcomings of conflict resolution efforts.

As the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region escalates, neighbors Chad and the Central African Republic face growing instability spurred by their own rebel groups. At the center of the spreading conflict is Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

In a constant state of near-drought and desperately poor in good times, the desert republic of Chad is heading toward a fateful election early next month as Darfur's hungry refugees, a bloody rebel army, and the World Bank all demand their due.

The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region increasingly threatens two neighboring countries—Chad and the Central African Republic. Here is a look at the major actors and how each country’s government has addressed—or exacerbated—the crisis.

The World Bank, a U.S.-led oil consortium, and Chad's government came together for a pipeline plan that was hailed as a new model to help developing nations escape poverty and avoid corruption. But unstable Chad's decision to modify the agreement to buy arms threatened to doom the arrangement.

This International Crisis Group brief examines the exploitation of oil revenues in Chad and recommends establishing stricter control and oversight over the oil revenues management mechanism.

A German institute for international and security affairs calls on the EU to re-examine the underlying purposes of EUFOR Chad/CAR and consider abandoning the entire operation.

Amnesty International details how the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has spread to eastern Chad. Amnesty claims that several thousand people have been killed and that thousands of women and girls have been raped.

In this report the US Institute for Peace (USIP) details proceedings at its Sudan Peace Forum in December 2006 in which Dr Chester Crocker and Dr Francis Deng co-chaired a discussion of overlapping crises in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic. The meeting was prompted by recent comments of the United Nations Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland, who warned that the crises in Darfur, Chad, and CAR are "intimately linked" and could lead to a "dangerous regional crisis."

In this report Amnesty International says that thousands of women have been raped in Sudan and Chad since the armed conflict began in Darfur in 2003. There have certainly been thousands. The names of 250 women who had been raped, and harrowing information about their cases, were recorded by Amnesty International on a 10-day visit to just three refugee camps in Chad in 2004. Recent months have seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of rapes as Darfur has been plunged into new fighting. In just one camp in Darfur, Kalma camp, the International Rescue Committee reported that rapes of women rose from under four to 200 a month during five weeks in July and August 2006. Overall, despite  the presence of an African Union peacekeeping force (African Union Mission in Sudan, AMIS) and international awareness of what is happening in Darfur, in 2006 rapes and other violence against women and girls have increased, not diminished.

The Human Rights Watch reports that more than one hundred people have been killed in recent attacks in Eastern Chad. Witnesses showed Human Rights Watch researchers one of the massacre sites.  Human Rights Watch is increasingly circumspect about escalating volatility in West Darfur, which is controlled by the Sudanese government and boarders Chad.  The porous border and diverse armament of groups in the region is ominous and representative of the hostile region.

This Human Rights Watch report argues that U.N. and A.U. forces must now turn their attention to protecting civilians from raids.

Alex de Waal, an Africa expert at the Social Science Research Council, says the rebellion in Chad could prompt an escalation of the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.