In April 2012, a small team of wandering miners discovered gold in the Jebel Amir hills of North Darfur, Sudan.”...With the gold trade came criminals carrying “arms of every caliber,” a local who would prefer to go unnamed told me. “You could find any weapon in Jebel Amir, as well as imported alcohol, drugs, prostitutes.”...To stop the bloodshed and mass displacement in Darfur -- since the start of 2014, another 200,000 have fled their homes -- the government will need to get serious about controlling the militias. New resources, such as gold, are just a piece of the puzzle -- behind local conflicts are decades of frustration. Darfurians of all stripes believe that successive governments have stolen their wealth. Such feelings of marginalization have spread throughout Sudan’s periphery and are at the heart of the country’s national crisis...Over the last three years, Sudan has experienced a number of gold rushes. New discoveries and high world prices are part of the story. But Khartoum has also promoted gold mining to offset oil production lost after South Sudan’s independence.