It's weird, it's really weird - I've pretty much devoted my life to fighting against genocide and recovery after the fact (so much as there can ever be recovery), but yet - Saddam was just executed, and I feel terrible. I mean, my folks and I were talking about it last night, and we were all pretty sad. Weird, you know, because in March 1988, he gassed Hallabja (a Kurdish city in Iraq) - they called it the 'Kirdish Hiroshima'. Loads of things, thousands of people, kids, perished in incidents like that, at his command. He was put to death for war crimes, for the murder of 147 boys and men. He was still on trial for genocide when they killed him. I was saddened, then, on a couple of levels. The most fundamental level is that we should not be killing anybody. My life is greatly dedicated to ousting people like Hussein from power, so that genocide can't continue, but he was imprisoned: he could not kill anyone anymore, and there is absolutely no justice in taking one's life when not directly defending someone else's. 'Good or bad, he's still a person'. Ah, Care Bears wisdom which will never leave me. Good or bad, he was still a person.
Secondly, though, they killed him in the middle of his genocide trial. They rushed his execution, and that is just nonsense. Firstly, we know I think he shouldn't have been killed anyway. It was murder in the cold blood, but it was an eventuality, unfortunately. So if I must come to grips with that terrifying fact that we're going to murder someone, I have to say that they needed to wait until he was tried for genocide. This is a terrible defeat for humanity and for Raphael Lemkin. Now, it is impossible to have a truly revealing trial: now, they cannot learn who helped him, they cannot show the world definitively that this is what happens when someone commits genocide. International courts will charge you with your crime when you are guilty of genocide: this message has now been lost, forever hanging in the same noose as Saddam Hussein, the horrible man who was once a child.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
The United States and Darfur - Very Briefly
According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "The Sudanese need to be convinced that if they are not willing to accept [] help from the international system, then they're going to be held accountable for anything that happens" (Reuters, 15 December). There is no 'if' about it: the Sudanese government has made it quite clear that it will not accept any legitimate help from the international community in terms of saving lives in Darfur, mainly because it is the body supporting and carrying out the massacres. Rice said they "will be held accountable": certainly, there are many who cannot wait for the International Criminal Court to issue its case evidence and suspect names against (presumably) members of the Sudanese government, Janjaweed, and even some rebel leaders for war crimes in February. The United States is not among those many, however, because this country is so staunchly opposed to the International Criminal Court. Therefore, we have absolutely no means with which to hold anyone accountable for anything, genocide or war crimes or ethnic cleansing. She also said that they will be responsible for anything "that happens": this future tense is completely denying the realities on the ground right now, as this genocide has exploded into an international genocide and war, leaving tens of thousands displaced, starving, and burnt to death in its wake.
Rice also stated that sanctions are being looked in to by the Security Council: there are already sanctions in place on Sudan, yet Khartoum is prospering as never before, and has perhaps the fastest growing economy in Africa. None of this is reaching Darfur unless it is in the form of rocket-propelled grenades and land cruisers, but regardless, the economy is soaring in Khartoum. Sanctions obviously have not played their part to curb violence in the past, particularly in this region: there is no evidence to suggest that sanctions will do anything more now.
No-fly zones would also be grossly ineffectual. The Sudanese government has even begun to paint their Antonov helicopters white, which is the color of medical vehicles. The paint job makes it difficult to distinguish military from aid planes, which renders a split-second decision no-fly zone enforcement nearly impossible.
"But the thing right now is to try and get the Sudanese to agree", Rice says. Agree to what? The government has categorically refused, countless times, to allow the Resolution 1706 mandated UN force into Sudan. In fact, it has been said multiple times that Darfur will become a "graveyard" for any UN peacekeepers that try to enter the region. The Sudanese government is responsible for carrying out a brutal genocide against its own people: there is absolutely no reason for it to open its arms to international troops. Bashir will never agree to that, and as long as Secretary Rice knows that, she will continue to passively claim that this genocide will be halted with utterly unsupported words spoken from the comfort of a briefing room thousands of miles away from the screams of the children of Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic.
Rice also stated that sanctions are being looked in to by the Security Council: there are already sanctions in place on Sudan, yet Khartoum is prospering as never before, and has perhaps the fastest growing economy in Africa. None of this is reaching Darfur unless it is in the form of rocket-propelled grenades and land cruisers, but regardless, the economy is soaring in Khartoum. Sanctions obviously have not played their part to curb violence in the past, particularly in this region: there is no evidence to suggest that sanctions will do anything more now.
No-fly zones would also be grossly ineffectual. The Sudanese government has even begun to paint their Antonov helicopters white, which is the color of medical vehicles. The paint job makes it difficult to distinguish military from aid planes, which renders a split-second decision no-fly zone enforcement nearly impossible.
"But the thing right now is to try and get the Sudanese to agree", Rice says. Agree to what? The government has categorically refused, countless times, to allow the Resolution 1706 mandated UN force into Sudan. In fact, it has been said multiple times that Darfur will become a "graveyard" for any UN peacekeepers that try to enter the region. The Sudanese government is responsible for carrying out a brutal genocide against its own people: there is absolutely no reason for it to open its arms to international troops. Bashir will never agree to that, and as long as Secretary Rice knows that, she will continue to passively claim that this genocide will be halted with utterly unsupported words spoken from the comfort of a briefing room thousands of miles away from the screams of the children of Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Chadian Troops Enter Darfur
Although the Chadian minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor has been quoted as saying that "Chad has not declared war to Sudan and has no intention of doing so," the fact that the Chadian army has entered Darfur is extremely disconcerting, to say the least. In pursuit of Chadian rebels, forces have moved relatively deeply in to Darfur, a mere 20 kilometers west from El Geneina in West Darfur on Friday. This is occuring in the context of half a million civilians being without access to life-sustaining international aid. Aid agencies have rapidly been pulling out of the region during the past two weeks especially (over 650 personnel were pulled out within the last two weeks), and this is leaving civilians of Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic more susceptible than ever to attacks, rape, disease, and mass starvation.
Saturday, December 9, 2006
December 10th: Merry Human Rights Day
On 10 December 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, inadvertently marking the date as Human Rights Day for future generations. This was a moment in time which represented "the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want", three years since the atomic bomb slaughtered and saved thousands, since human beings had celebrated the end of what was to have been the last 'great' war, since what has become the world's most recognized genocide was ended. Article 1 of the Declaration states, point blank, that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights", without conditions or pretenses. Article 19 declares that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression": everyone, no acceptions. And Article 28 says that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized": everyone, yet again. Everyone.
Yet every day we forget. We forget, don't we, that 'everyone' is not limited to the people we know personally, to the people in our neighborhoods, to our city, or even to our country and hemisphere. Appropriately, NASA's space shuttle Discovery launched earlier this night, sending seven human beings into the majesty of space, to further the operation of a beatiful craft dubbed the International Space Station. Humanity is an amazing thing: the resiliency of our species, the creativity, the passion, the potential for such wonderful empathy and such terrifying lack...
There should be no need to declare a 'Human Rigts Day'. Much like that day that seems merely to fill a holiday-void in mid-February (let's face it - we'd all be a lot happier if we treated every day like Love Day), declaring a day in honor of human rights should be extremely redundant.
December 10th. Human Rights Day. Live it every day.
Yet every day we forget. We forget, don't we, that 'everyone' is not limited to the people we know personally, to the people in our neighborhoods, to our city, or even to our country and hemisphere. Appropriately, NASA's space shuttle Discovery launched earlier this night, sending seven human beings into the majesty of space, to further the operation of a beatiful craft dubbed the International Space Station. Humanity is an amazing thing: the resiliency of our species, the creativity, the passion, the potential for such wonderful empathy and such terrifying lack...
There should be no need to declare a 'Human Rigts Day'. Much like that day that seems merely to fill a holiday-void in mid-February (let's face it - we'd all be a lot happier if we treated every day like Love Day), declaring a day in honor of human rights should be extremely redundant.
December 10th. Human Rights Day. Live it every day.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Sudan Wins Prize for Highest HIV Infection Rate in North Africa and the Middle East
The UN has recently reported that Sudan is now the leader in HIV infections in any North African or Middle Eastern country. The western region of Darfur is particularly susceptible, not only because of the massive rape campaigns being carried out by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias, but also because of commercial sex and no protection. Not only is the number of people with HIV in Sudan growing at a disturbing pace, but there is hardly any medical treatment for cholera or superficial bullet wounds, let alone for the highly regimented routine that is required when taking HIV medications. Further, the 21 year long civil war between the North and South of Sudan cut off the southern regions from access to HIV/AIDS treatment on any level for years. Now that the civil war is flaring up again, the situation is only becoming worse. (http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56655&SelectRegion=East_Africa&SelectCountry=SUDAN)
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Central African Republic Dying With Darfur
The World Food Program has declared that the terror that exists in Darfur is no longer confined to Darfur and Chad: it has long been felt in the northwestern region of the Central African Republic, which borders with south eastern Darfur. Over 150,000 people living in that region of the small and troubled nation live from day to day off of whatever wild food they may have the fortune of coming across. Although 50,000 people have been forced across the border to Chad from CAR in the last four years (as a direct result of the Darfur conflict), the WFP says it's more concerned with those left behind, fending for themselves in a region that is normally the 'breadbasket' of the country. The violence of mass starvation from the Darfur genocide has now spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic, and the world remains silent. (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20844&Cr=car&Cr1=)
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Chad and Darfur: Cannot Mention One Without the Other
A few short months ago, the relatively safe place to be in order to gather documentation and witness reports from the genocide in Darfur was the border with Chad. Permission to enter Darfur is extremely difficult to obtain from the Sudanese government, so Chad was the place for journalists to be. Darfuri refugees camps in Chad were easy to come across, and relatively safe from physical attack.
Today, 150 kilometers away from its border with Darfur, Chad is as unstable as Darfur itself. The genocide has broken its way through to another country, and the Janjaweed have followed their Sudanese victims into Chad, now attacking Chadian "blacks" as well. The following is an excerpt from a recent Amnesty International report on the situation, to be found at http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGAFR200132006 :
"'Five men who tried to run away were captured by the Janjawid.(...) They tied ropes around their necks and then to their horses and then rode their horses back and forth dragging their bodies for about five to ten minutes. Blood was pouring out of their mouths and noses. They even whipped them on their heads and bodies with their reins, until they were completely covered in blood.'"
Testimony of Abdelrahman Sinoussi, describing the killing of five villagers from Koloye."
What is required is swift and decisive international action in the form of deploying a UN peacekeeping force into the affected region, without the permission of the Sudanese government. Peacekeepers must be sent to Chad, as well, and Sudanese President al-Bashir can say nothing about that. Certainly, there must be a peace established to be kept by these peacekeepers, and al-Bashir has made it clear with his repeated and vehement proclamations against the UN that he is not to be negotiated with. He and his cohorts must be arrested and taken to the International Criminal Court, where Louis Moreno-Ocampo (chief prosecutor at the ICC) is almost ready to state his case against the war criminals in Sudan.
The one problem with Moreno-Ocampo's case is that the charges (though they have not been formally made) do not include the crime of genocide. What is occurring in Darfur and Chad is as much a genocide as what occurred in Europe during World War Two and has since occurred in Bosnia, Cambodia, Iraq, and Rwanda, and it must be treated as such by the the International Criminal Court and by the world at large.
Today, 150 kilometers away from its border with Darfur, Chad is as unstable as Darfur itself. The genocide has broken its way through to another country, and the Janjaweed have followed their Sudanese victims into Chad, now attacking Chadian "blacks" as well. The following is an excerpt from a recent Amnesty International report on the situation, to be found at http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGAFR200132006 :
"'Five men who tried to run away were captured by the Janjawid.(...) They tied ropes around their necks and then to their horses and then rode their horses back and forth dragging their bodies for about five to ten minutes. Blood was pouring out of their mouths and noses. They even whipped them on their heads and bodies with their reins, until they were completely covered in blood.'"
Testimony of Abdelrahman Sinoussi, describing the killing of five villagers from Koloye."
What is required is swift and decisive international action in the form of deploying a UN peacekeeping force into the affected region, without the permission of the Sudanese government. Peacekeepers must be sent to Chad, as well, and Sudanese President al-Bashir can say nothing about that. Certainly, there must be a peace established to be kept by these peacekeepers, and al-Bashir has made it clear with his repeated and vehement proclamations against the UN that he is not to be negotiated with. He and his cohorts must be arrested and taken to the International Criminal Court, where Louis Moreno-Ocampo (chief prosecutor at the ICC) is almost ready to state his case against the war criminals in Sudan.
The one problem with Moreno-Ocampo's case is that the charges (though they have not been formally made) do not include the crime of genocide. What is occurring in Darfur and Chad is as much a genocide as what occurred in Europe during World War Two and has since occurred in Bosnia, Cambodia, Iraq, and Rwanda, and it must be treated as such by the the International Criminal Court and by the world at large.
Cholera Outbreak Imminent in South Sudan
9 January 2005 marked the paper-work ending of a 21 year old civil war between Northern and Southern Sudan that stole over 2 million lives. Almost two years later, the UN fears that cholera will soon break out in Southern Sudan, due to water contamination in the Nile River. The contamination is coming from human corpses, floating in the river after the people were killed in fighting in Malakal, South Sudan. The fighting, which killed over 150 people and wounded hundreds more, according to UN estimates, broke out between Khartoum and SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) rebel forces last week. The SPLA accused Khartoum's Sudan Armed Forces of an attempt on the life of an SPLA commander, which led to retaliatory fighting that left over two dozens civilians among the dead.
The fighting did not occur in Darfur, but the intense and intricate conflicts between the North and South of Sudan have ripple effects throughout the whole country, and this is far from the last story that will emerge from Sudan about the deteriorating situation in the South.
The fighting did not occur in Darfur, but the intense and intricate conflicts between the North and South of Sudan have ripple effects throughout the whole country, and this is far from the last story that will emerge from Sudan about the deteriorating situation in the South.
You Want the UN's Support, Mr. Bashir? You've Got It.
Less than 9,000 people have been killed in the Darfur conflict during the last three years, according to Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. To quell the little violence that does occur, President Bashir has proposed before the television screens of eight different nations that the UN provide the funding for a completely ineffective African Union force, which has no mandate or means with which to save any lives in the region. (The fact that its limited mission in Darfur has been extended to 31 June 2007 is almost inconsequential, as the troops have not been given stronger mandates or any significant means with which to achieve any real purpose.)
In response to Bashir's two and a half hour press release in which he made the above claims, Sudan's Popular Congress Party's Bashir Adam Rahman said that "When [al-Bashir] denies the sun in the middle of the day that means either he is not serious or he thinks people are fools" (Reuters).
Mr. Rahman's point is well taken, as over 300,000 people have perished in the almost four year old genocide. Over 10,000 people are being killed each month, according the the World Health Organization, let alone in the last three and a half years. This monthly human toll is bound to be on the rise, as the violence continues to engulf neighboring Chad.
The recently formed UN Human Rights Council has subtly declared that President Bashir has the support he has requested. On November 28th, the Council rejected a European Union proposal "to highlight what they said was the special responsibilty of the Sudan government to rein in rights violations and bring those involved to justice" (Reuters). (The rejection was made by a vote of 22-20, with 4 members abstaining.)An African proposal made to "call for an end to violations in Darfur but without criticizing Khartoum" passed, however, indicating the UN's apparent willingness to condemn war crimes, systematic rape, and starvation used as a weapon of war without following up their condemnations with life-saving action. Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN has been very outspoken about halting the slaughters, and his efforts are to be commended. The absent action of his organization at large, however, is a disgrace to humanity. Not only is this a humanitarian issue to be immediately dealt with, but Chapter VII of the UN's own Charter mandates that war crimes be halted using "action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security" (Article 42). For those who refuse to see the serious implications for international security that the refugee problems in Darfur and Chad will soon become, see my earlier posting, Proof of Genocide and the Future of Terrorism. Chad has now become fully immersed in the genocide, providing both additional victims and perpetrators for the Sudanese government.
In response to Bashir's two and a half hour press release in which he made the above claims, Sudan's Popular Congress Party's Bashir Adam Rahman said that "When [al-Bashir] denies the sun in the middle of the day that means either he is not serious or he thinks people are fools" (Reuters).
Mr. Rahman's point is well taken, as over 300,000 people have perished in the almost four year old genocide. Over 10,000 people are being killed each month, according the the World Health Organization, let alone in the last three and a half years. This monthly human toll is bound to be on the rise, as the violence continues to engulf neighboring Chad.
The recently formed UN Human Rights Council has subtly declared that President Bashir has the support he has requested. On November 28th, the Council rejected a European Union proposal "to highlight what they said was the special responsibilty of the Sudan government to rein in rights violations and bring those involved to justice" (Reuters). (The rejection was made by a vote of 22-20, with 4 members abstaining.)An African proposal made to "call for an end to violations in Darfur but without criticizing Khartoum" passed, however, indicating the UN's apparent willingness to condemn war crimes, systematic rape, and starvation used as a weapon of war without following up their condemnations with life-saving action. Jan Egeland, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN has been very outspoken about halting the slaughters, and his efforts are to be commended. The absent action of his organization at large, however, is a disgrace to humanity. Not only is this a humanitarian issue to be immediately dealt with, but Chapter VII of the UN's own Charter mandates that war crimes be halted using "action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security" (Article 42). For those who refuse to see the serious implications for international security that the refugee problems in Darfur and Chad will soon become, see my earlier posting, Proof of Genocide and the Future of Terrorism. Chad has now become fully immersed in the genocide, providing both additional victims and perpetrators for the Sudanese government.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
What About Our Grandparents?
The culture in Darfur dictates the the elderly be cared for by their surrounding extended family, and that they be respected and revered when living in their villages. Millions of Dafurians are now, however, struggling for survival in dreadful camps for internally displaced civilians, and according to HelpAge International, 8% of those civilians are older people. They can no longer be cared for by their families because they have been separated from them, by death or by distance. In fact, the elderly population in Darfur's growing refugee camps often care for the younger generations, despite their old age, often failing health, and emotional anguish at having lost nearly everything. One 80 year old woman told a representative of HelpAge International that "If I go go back there is no home, there are no animals, and the people I know are gone and killed. Who can I sit with?".
A recent HelpAge International report, "Rebuilding Lives in Longer-Term Emergencies", points out that the elderly community is often marginalized by international aid groups, which have limitied capabilities with which to save the lives of small children and their mothers. (http://www.helpage.org/Resources/Researchreports/main_content/oT8a/RebuildingLives.pdf) Elderly people, along with tiny children, are often thrown into flames alive by Janjaweed and government forces, in addition to their daily struggles to resist starvation and to care for their grandchildren. The elderly are not immune to violent and brutal attacks. As one 68 year old woman put it, "During the conflict I was beaten with sticks and all my family was killed in front of me. I stayed two days with dead bodies. Now the situation has only worsened. We can't move freely. We don't have work. It's very bad".
So much emphasis is, rightfully so, placed on the terrors of gang rape aimed at young women, even girls as young as 8. Yet the trials of the aging population of Darfur are not much heard about: indeed, the ignorance and apathy regarding this genocide in general is rampant among those who can easily change it. Words will not save these lives, young or old.
The United Nations must back up their words about Darfur, and in so doing, Russia and China must be convinced to support the end of Al-Bashir's regime in Sudan. He and many others must be brought before the International Criminal Court, not only for war crimes, but for the crime of genocide. The United Nations needs to demonstrate that it is unified and serious beyond words and ineffective sanctions. The National Redemption Front (a new coalition of rebel forces) and the Khartoum government must be led to the negotiating table by unrelenting international pressure that is backed up by a strong United Nations peacekeeping force. Not only is stopping genocide mandated by international law, but it is, first and foremost, the imperative of humanity to protect the sanctity of life everywhere. Only when we as human beings unite to bring about an end to the slaughters will HelpAge International be able to report that the elderly population in Darfur is afflicted only by the joy of seeing their grandchildren grow up.
A recent HelpAge International report, "Rebuilding Lives in Longer-Term Emergencies", points out that the elderly community is often marginalized by international aid groups, which have limitied capabilities with which to save the lives of small children and their mothers. (http://www.helpage.org/Resources/Researchreports/main_content/oT8a/RebuildingLives.pdf) Elderly people, along with tiny children, are often thrown into flames alive by Janjaweed and government forces, in addition to their daily struggles to resist starvation and to care for their grandchildren. The elderly are not immune to violent and brutal attacks. As one 68 year old woman put it, "During the conflict I was beaten with sticks and all my family was killed in front of me. I stayed two days with dead bodies. Now the situation has only worsened. We can't move freely. We don't have work. It's very bad".
So much emphasis is, rightfully so, placed on the terrors of gang rape aimed at young women, even girls as young as 8. Yet the trials of the aging population of Darfur are not much heard about: indeed, the ignorance and apathy regarding this genocide in general is rampant among those who can easily change it. Words will not save these lives, young or old.
The United Nations must back up their words about Darfur, and in so doing, Russia and China must be convinced to support the end of Al-Bashir's regime in Sudan. He and many others must be brought before the International Criminal Court, not only for war crimes, but for the crime of genocide. The United Nations needs to demonstrate that it is unified and serious beyond words and ineffective sanctions. The National Redemption Front (a new coalition of rebel forces) and the Khartoum government must be led to the negotiating table by unrelenting international pressure that is backed up by a strong United Nations peacekeeping force. Not only is stopping genocide mandated by international law, but it is, first and foremost, the imperative of humanity to protect the sanctity of life everywhere. Only when we as human beings unite to bring about an end to the slaughters will HelpAge International be able to report that the elderly population in Darfur is afflicted only by the joy of seeing their grandchildren grow up.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
A Day of Thanks (for some)
On November 21st, the 34 year old anti-Syrian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in Lebanon. Almost immediately, condemnations of the political murder were issued all across the world, by everyone from Pope Benedict to George Bush and the UN. Certainly, this assassination will have wide spread ramifications for many.
On November 19th, dozens of children, many of whom hadn't even reached 'double digits' yet, were slaughtered by Sudanese government and Janjaweed militia forces. Not a peep was uttered by the international community at large, not a peep: toddlers are being machine-gunned down whilst pleading for their lives every day in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Chad, "while we speak", according to Jan Egeland of the UN.
This Thursday, toddlers across Darfur and Chad will literally be being yanked from their mothers' arms and thrown into flames to die screaming and flailing, engulfed in the same majestic orange and red that will be simultaneously roasting turkerys across America. We have a lot to be thankful for: so much, in fact, that the phrase has become hopelessly cliched. This Thursday, even without protection from insane relatives and family affairs, we will be safe: this Thursday, without any protection from genocidal slaughters and violence, innocence in Darfur will continue to be reduced to ashes on the ground and decaying bodies on the lonely desert floor.
On November 19th, dozens of children, many of whom hadn't even reached 'double digits' yet, were slaughtered by Sudanese government and Janjaweed militia forces. Not a peep was uttered by the international community at large, not a peep: toddlers are being machine-gunned down whilst pleading for their lives every day in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Chad, "while we speak", according to Jan Egeland of the UN.
This Thursday, toddlers across Darfur and Chad will literally be being yanked from their mothers' arms and thrown into flames to die screaming and flailing, engulfed in the same majestic orange and red that will be simultaneously roasting turkerys across America. We have a lot to be thankful for: so much, in fact, that the phrase has become hopelessly cliched. This Thursday, even without protection from insane relatives and family affairs, we will be safe: this Thursday, without any protection from genocidal slaughters and violence, innocence in Darfur will continue to be reduced to ashes on the ground and decaying bodies on the lonely desert floor.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Darfur Children Dragged From Mothers, Shot
And so my last posting was accurate: I wish with everything in the universe that it weren't. I've merely copy-pasted this from sudantribune.com - commentary is often inadequate next to facts. And here they are:
Nov 19, 2006 (TINE, Sudan) — Dozens of screaming toddlers in the Darfur region of Sudan were ripped away from their mothers and shot to death, it was reported Sunday.
Older children who tried to save their brothers and sisters were hunted down, The Sunday Times of London reported.
Another group — aged 5, 7 and 9 — tried to run away. A 5-year-old fell down and was shot dead. Another boy stopped and told the attacker: "You killed this child. Please let me go." A moment later he was killed too, one of more than 20 children who died that day, the newspaper said.
Local people put the number of dead in the attack this month at 63, mostly old men and children. The African Union, which has a peacekeeping force in Darfur, said 92 people died in the eight villages attacked.
The Darfur crisis could become "infinitely worse" if a deal to send a combined United Nations and African force is not put into effect quickly, the United Nations humanitarian chief said Saturday.
(UPI)
Nov 19, 2006 (TINE, Sudan) — Dozens of screaming toddlers in the Darfur region of Sudan were ripped away from their mothers and shot to death, it was reported Sunday.
Older children who tried to save their brothers and sisters were hunted down, The Sunday Times of London reported.
Another group — aged 5, 7 and 9 — tried to run away. A 5-year-old fell down and was shot dead. Another boy stopped and told the attacker: "You killed this child. Please let me go." A moment later he was killed too, one of more than 20 children who died that day, the newspaper said.
Local people put the number of dead in the attack this month at 63, mostly old men and children. The African Union, which has a peacekeeping force in Darfur, said 92 people died in the eight villages attacked.
The Darfur crisis could become "infinitely worse" if a deal to send a combined United Nations and African force is not put into effect quickly, the United Nations humanitarian chief said Saturday.
(UPI)
Children Will Die For This
Yesterday, over 100 Sudanese government and Janjwaeed fighters were killed by SLA rebels, whose "African" families are the victims of genocide. Violence is never to be applauded, and rebel fighters are certainly not guiltless in inflicting pain upon fellow humam beings. However, this particular attack, no doubt in defense against and retaliation for the hundreds of civilian deaths inflicted upon "Africans" in Darfur and Chad in the last few weeks, has terrifying implications. Yesterday, 100 government and Janjaweed forces were killed. Because of this, violence will no doubt increase again, the grief and humiliation of such a loss being taken out on innocent civilians yet again.
Raphael Lemkin used to say that 'genocide is not war. Genocide is much more dangerous than war'. This rebel attack was, ironically, good for the Sudanese government. It is now so much easier for the government to claim that genocide is not being committed: rather, the government is merely repressing rebellion and violent insurgency. To repress violent insurgency, however, is to focus attacks on the rebels, not their children and parents and wives and sisters. Three weeks ago, a three year old boy named Adam was slaughtered by Janjaweed forces and a machine gun in the name of 'counter-insurgency'. The attack the rebels just carried out, while in the sad name of self-defense, will cost countless more lives like Adam's to be lost.
Here we have a terrible paradox: to fight back is terrifying, because the more damage inflicted upon government forces, the harsher the retaliatory action against civilians. Yet to not fight back is to surrender your child's life to flames and machine guns and bombs and rape. The international community needs to help these people: the Genocide Convention of 1948 mandates that the leaders involved in this genocide be brought to court, and that the violence be stemmed immediately. Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter mandates the Security Council to take stringent action against war crimes of this kind. More to the point, the very nature of being humanity mandates that we save these innocent lives from further destruction.
Further, the agreement that the Sudanese government and the UN recently agreed to (tentatively) has predictably fallen through in plain sight (see my post "What's Up With Darfur, Anyway?"). Lam Akol, the Sudanese foreign minister, just said that "We did not agree to the deployment of hybrid United Nations-African Union forces in Darfur, as was declared by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan after the Addis Ababa consultative meeting". That's that, then. Predictably.
For every wink of sleep you get tonight, a child in Darfur will be crying out in dying agony.
Raphael Lemkin used to say that 'genocide is not war. Genocide is much more dangerous than war'. This rebel attack was, ironically, good for the Sudanese government. It is now so much easier for the government to claim that genocide is not being committed: rather, the government is merely repressing rebellion and violent insurgency. To repress violent insurgency, however, is to focus attacks on the rebels, not their children and parents and wives and sisters. Three weeks ago, a three year old boy named Adam was slaughtered by Janjaweed forces and a machine gun in the name of 'counter-insurgency'. The attack the rebels just carried out, while in the sad name of self-defense, will cost countless more lives like Adam's to be lost.
Here we have a terrible paradox: to fight back is terrifying, because the more damage inflicted upon government forces, the harsher the retaliatory action against civilians. Yet to not fight back is to surrender your child's life to flames and machine guns and bombs and rape. The international community needs to help these people: the Genocide Convention of 1948 mandates that the leaders involved in this genocide be brought to court, and that the violence be stemmed immediately. Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter mandates the Security Council to take stringent action against war crimes of this kind. More to the point, the very nature of being humanity mandates that we save these innocent lives from further destruction.
Further, the agreement that the Sudanese government and the UN recently agreed to (tentatively) has predictably fallen through in plain sight (see my post "What's Up With Darfur, Anyway?"). Lam Akol, the Sudanese foreign minister, just said that "We did not agree to the deployment of hybrid United Nations-African Union forces in Darfur, as was declared by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan after the Addis Ababa consultative meeting". That's that, then. Predictably.
For every wink of sleep you get tonight, a child in Darfur will be crying out in dying agony.
Proof of Genocide and the Future of Terrorism
On 9 September 2004, Colin Powell declared, with the President’s administration behind his words, that the horrific slaughters and systematic rapes in Darfur, Sudan constituted genocide. On 25 January 2005, the United Nations sanctioned International Commission of Inquiry into Darfur (ICID), having assessed the same situation, issued a report saying that it could not accuse the Sudanese government of genocide. There lacked, it said, the intent to commit genocide necessary to convict someone of such a heinous crime. Certainly, the ICID had access to more information about the atrocities than this writer, yet it is also certain that even someone with this amount of information can establish the guilt of the Sudanese government and their Janjawid militias alike, in brutally and intentionally carrying out the first genocide of the twenty-first century.
The contemporary history of Darfur is rich with illustrations of how and why this genocide is now occurring. In 1984, there was a fairly common drought in Sudan: the subsequent famine that developed in Darfur was utterly avoidable. However, the distant government in Khartoum has historically marginalized the Darfuri people, and the ‘84 drought was no different. The government in Darfur was incredibly weak, and Khartoum only exacerbated the problem: as documented by Gerard Prunier in his book, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, “Funds earmarked for water projects [in Darfur] had been lying for years in Port Sudan with nobody bothering to collect it, the rural water teams did not receive their salaries on time, and the relevant ministries in Khartoum simply issued glorified statistics bearing no relationship to reality”. Thus the people of Darfur starved, lacking the necessary water to lead their normal lives and to produce enough food to survive on.
In the Sudan, “Arab” tribes live mainly as nomads, while “black Africans” tend to be farmers: until this point in history, these groups had a generally symbiotic relationship. “Arab” nomads passing through a farmer’s land would graze their animals on said land, and the farmers would get traded goods from the nomads in exchange. When famine struck, however, and there was no hope of receiving life-sustaining aid from Khartoum, the Darfuri people (“Arab and “African” alike) were left to fend for themselves. Tensions between the groups escalated during this period because of the dramatic scarcity of food.
This tension was then used by Khartoum to its advantage: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Sudan’s neighbor, Libya, had immediate designs on Chad. To ensure the “Libyanization” of Chad, Gaddafi wanted to wage a proxy war in Darfur (strategically located on Chad’s eastern border and the south-eastern border of Libya). Sadiq al-Mahdi, Sudan’s leader at the time, allowed the fighting to take place in Darfur, largely because he received four MiG-23 fighter bombers for the Sudan Armed Forces from Libya (Prunier). Here began a long precedent for Khartoum using Darfur only as a battlefield to gain leverage in Chadian and Libyan ambitions, politics, and warfare.
Thousands and thousands were perishing in Darfur because of Khartoum’s lethal combination of neglecting the Darfuri people (particularly “black Africans”) and using them as pawns in international struggles. After years of organization, on 25 April 2003, the Sudan Liberation Army rebel group attacked government forces at El-Fashir and Nyala. They “killed thirty government soldiers and two officers, occupied the airport, blew up two Antonov An-12 ‘transport bombers’, and three Mil Mi-17 combat helicopters, and captured Brigadier Ibashim Bushra Ismail, the air force base commander” (Prunier). This was a job militaristically too well done, and Khartoum was frightened that these rebels, who were fighting against the marginalization and oppression of their black African tribes, posed a serious threat against their power. This rebellion could result in a total loss of Khartoum’s stronghold in the area, which would make it as vulnerable to the interference of neighboring forces as Chad was. All the “black Africans”, then, must be removed, and the tension that had been strengthened in the ‘84 famine proved easy for the government to exacerbate, pitting “Arab” Muslims against “African” Muslims: pitting human being against human being.
The government decided to use the “Arab” Janjawid militia as their means through which to commit genocide because the government army (at the time) had too many “black Africans” in it, who refused to slaughter their ethnic brethren. Further, it would be much easier to deny connections with the Janjawid, and dismiss the massive scales of rape and slaughter in Darfur as merely local ethnic complications.
Article 2 of the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (1948) specifies five actions that, when any of them are committed with genocidal intent (to be addressed presently), make the perpetrator guilty not of just any crime against humanity, but of genocide. The first of these actions are “killing members of the group”. It is an undisputed fact that the Janjawid are responsible for countless deaths in the Darfur region. These murders are on a vast scale (400,000 dead in the past three years, and this rough figure rises by about ten thousand souls every month). The second action listed is “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”. A 25 February 2006 Human Rights Watch report testifies that “Male relatives who protested [to the women getting raped] were beaten, stripped naked, tied to trees, and forced to watch the rape of the women and girls. In some cases, the men were then branded with a hot knife as a mark of their humiliation”. Another horrifically perfect example of this harm, both bodily and mental, can be found in Julie Flint and Alex de Waal’s 2005 book, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War:
"In the village of Har Jang in North Darfur in April 2004, Janjawid summarily executed a group of young men with bullets in the back of the head. One young man who was the only survivor in his family, having saved his life by hiding under a dead mule, recounted how the attackers ‘took a knife and cut my mother’s throat and threw her into the well. Then they took my oldest sister and began to rape her, one by one. My father was kneeling, crying and begging them for mercy. After that they killed my brother and finally my father. They threw the bodies in the well.’"
The last statement, about throwing human carcasses in the previously clean water well, exemplifies the third action that can constitute genocide, that is, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. The Janjawid make it close to impossible for the refugees to live, according to a 5 October 2006 Amnesty International report, “Crying Out For Darfur”:
"The land abandoned [after the Janjawid forced villagers out] did not remain vacant. The Janjawid utilized the land of the displaced for their livestock, passing through villages, making use of the untended water points, taking what was left of the agricultural produce and attacking any of the original inhabitants who attempted to return - effectively occupying the land."
The mere fact that over three million Darfuri have been forced to relocate due to attacks (often multiple times), to struggle for sustenance in the awful conditions of tattered refugee camps, is a testament to how the genocidaires are bringing about “conditions of life” that is physically destroying their target. Even the refugee camps are terribly risky places to survive in: when women go out of the camps to gather firewood, they are very often raped by Janjawid, who patrol the area to ensure that the “zurga” (“slaves”) remain in their place. Men cannot go out to get firewood, because if they do they are most often killed. Even if they are not, an event like the following, recounted by a Masalit woman from West Darfur can occur (from the same Amnesty International report):
"Sometimes we go to collect grass, to sell in the market to buy things we need for our children. They [the Janjawid] send two people, and the rest of them set up an ambush. They stop their car in a khor or a hill. Some of them act as guards. The two people then approach us and, when we see them, we run. Some of us succeed in getting away, and some are caught and taken to be raped – gang-raped. Maybe around 20 men rape one woman… Last time a number of women got caught and I do not know what was done to them – we ran.
But for the men, they put saddles on their backs when they catch them – just like donkeys. My brother was one of them. They put the saddle on his back and fastened it tightly under his belly. They put something in his behind to make it look like he had a tail. They pulled his testicles out for all to see… We found him and took him for treatment to Al-Genaina hospital…
These things are normal for us here in Darfur. These things happen all the time. I have seen rapes too. It does not matter who sees them raping the women – they don’t care. They rape women in front of their mothers and fathers."
Firewood is essential because, among other reasons, the (very) limited amount of humanitarian food aid that can reach the refugees is not edible unless it is cooked. Rape is used, then, both as a terror tactic and as a weapon of war.
The fourth way in which one can commit genocide is by “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”. Rape used as a systematic weapon may not limit the number of births per se: however, a woman who has been raped is a woman permanently marked. (This mark is often physical: the Janjawid will slash a woman so deeply in the leg that she will, in the absence of proper medical treatment, hobble for the rest of her days. Yet the deeper mark is the horrible cultural stigma associated with being raped.) Children who are deemed to be ‘Arab’ because they were conceived when a Janjawid soldier brutalized their mother are not accepted into the community, and wives are disowned by their husbands if they reveal that they were raped.
The final act of genocide listed in the Genocide Convention of 1948 is “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. Ten thousand people are dying every month in Darfur, and a very large percentage of these are children under five, having been forced from their villages by their fellow human beings. Even more directly, the Janjawid has made a habit of sporadically capturing not only women, but also children, to hold for a time among them as sex slaves. On 19 July 2004, Amnesty International released another harrowing report about the situation in Darfur, here relaying the account of a sixty-six year old Darfuri:
"They took K.M., who is 12 years old in the open air. Her father was killed by the Janjawid in Um Baru, the rest of the family ran away and she was captured by the Janjawid who were on horse back. More than six people used her as a wife; she stayed with the Janjawid and the military more than 10 days. K, another woman who is married, aged 18, ran away but was captured by the Janjawid who slept with her in the open place, all of them slept with her. She is still with them. A, a teacher, told me that they broke her leg after raping her."
These are the actions of the Janjawid militias: however, to truly constitute genocide, it is true that the Genocide Convention does also mandate these inhuman and criminal acts must be committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”. This intent can be undeniably established in the case of the Janjawid and their leader, Musa Hilal. In a 2004 directive, sent out from the offices of Hilal himself, the order was given to “change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes”. Further, according to directives issued by the Executive Committee of the Arab Gathering (which Hilal supports), “zurga” areas need to be cleansed by Arabs, namely “to stop production in these areas, to eliminate their leaders...[and] to ensure their disunity” by 2020 (de Waal, Flint). Displaced Darfuri survivors in Chadian and Darfuri refugee camps claim, when the Janjawid destroyed their villages, that they were commonly heard shouting things such as “all the Blacks must die” (Prunier). Amnesty International recently interviewed a Masalit woman from West Darfur, who also claimed that “The Janjaweed told [her]: ‘You are a Nuba woman, daughter of a whore. You have no right to these cattle and they do not belong to you’”. So saying, they killed the man she was with and took off with their cattle.
The Janjawid are also often reported to tell their victims that the land “now belong[s] to the Arabs”. A survivor of a 2003 Janjawid attack on Jafal reported that the Janjawid said to the villagers “You are Black, you are like slaves. Then the Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs. The government is on our side. The government plane is on our side, it gives us food and ammunition” (Prunier). It is clear, then, that the actions of the Janjawid are not only horrible and inhuman: they also constitute genocide, because the intent behind them is certainly consistent with the desire to “destroy, in whole or in part, members of a[n]...ethnical...group”.
Yet the crimes do not stop with the Janjawid. The government of Sudan, too, is plainly guilty of the crime of genocide. The Janjawid militias, acting alone, would not have the military means with which to destroy lives and villages as they do. According to Peter Takirambudde in a 6 September 2006 Human Rights Watch report, “Government forces are bombing villages with blatant disregard for human rights”. These very same civilian lives are the ones the Janjawid are slaughtering with everything from machetes to rocket-propelled grenades. Accounts from a 2004 Amnesty International report by survivors subsisting near the Chadian border with Darfur typify attacks on their old homes:
"The Arabs [Janjawid] and the government forces arrived on both sides of the village with vehicles...There was also a [government] helicopter and an Antonov plane. They shelled the town with more than two hundred shells... Then the [Janjawid] burnt all our houses and took all the goods from the market."
A similar take from a different village:
"The Janjawid were accompanied by soldiers. They attacked people, saying: ‘You are the opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are Black, you are like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs. The government is on our side. The government plane is on our side, it gives us food and ammunition."
These numerous and highly consistent refugee reports seem to underline the UN’s own 31 August Panel of Experts report, which stated:
"The Janjawid/armed militias appear to have upgraded their modus operandi from horses, camels, and AK-47s to land cruisers, pick-up trucks and rocket-propelled grenades. Reliable sources indicate that the Janjawid continue to be subsumed into the [government’s] Popular Defense Force...evident is their ability to coordinate with the Sudanese armed forces in perpetrating attacks on villages and to engage in armed conflict with rebel groups."
This is certainly consistent with the fact that Khartoum is granted over one billion dollars worth of weaponry per year from China in exchange for oil deals (Amnesty International), and with Refugee International’s conclusion that:
China National Petroleum Corporation contributes Chinese-made tanks, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, firearms, and ammunition to the Sudanese military and SSDF [the Khartoum-backed militia forces in southern Sudan]. China has also established three arms factories in Sudan.
These arms deliveries seem to be getting through to the Janjawid militias, and their leader, Musa Hilal, certainly has not denied his connection with the government. In an interview with Human Rights Watch on 27 September 2004, Hilal repeatedly stated that “All of the people in the field are led by top army commanders...[The Janjawid he commands] get their orders from the Western command center and from Khartoum”. Further, a 28 August 2006 UNHCHR report seems to acknowledge the government’s direct involvement in the genocide:
"The [recent bombing in Buram, South Darfur] campaign, marked by widespread targeting of civilians from tribes that are locally referred to as being of African origin, wholesale burning of villages, looting and forced displacement, appears to have been conducted with the knowledge and material support of the Government atrocities."
The government is not merely complicit in the genocide, however (even though ‘mere’ “complicity in genocide” is punishable by Article 3 of the Genocide Convention): it is the driving force behind it. Starvation is being used by the government as a deadlier weapon than any rocket-propelled grenade in this genocide. There are between 300,000 and 500,000 metric tons of grain that Khartoum keeps tucked away in reserve, while millions of its own people are starving, relying on the international food aid that the government also tries to keep from the people. Sudan expert Eric Reeves stated in a 13 May 2006 report that only 17,000 metric tons of food would be needed to feed a million people for a month. Yet none of the 7,000 children under age five that perish each month in Darfur, often from malnutrition, ever see that stored grain. USAID said in a report from May 2006 that Khartoum sets food prices so high that it is cheaper for starving Darfuri to waste away whilst waiting for international food aid to reach them. This aid is being choked, however, as refugee camps become more and more inaccessible to foreign aid workers. Twelve aid workers have been killed in Darfur in the last few months, and Dr. Denis Lamasson of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans FrontiPres has said, “MSF has experienced four major incidents. While I was visiting Mornay, a team arrived. They had been attacked and beaten on the road and their car struck by gunfire. The team was lucky to make it back”. The World Food Program has been forced to half its distributions, and as a result, 355,000 people went without necessary food aid in August alone.
Targeted starvation as, essentially, a genocidal weapon of mass destruction is being used by the Sudanese government right now, at the brink of the 21st century: and the world is merely watching. Indeed, “the present conflict seems to be an attempt to remove the tribes of African origin and make it an entirely Arab tribe area. This was reportedly done with the assumption that any international troops would focus on maintaining the status quo in the area” (UNHCHR, 28 August 2006). The international community must utilize all the information at its fingertips, contemporary history and that of years past, that of Sudan and of WWII Europe, 1980s and 90s Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda. This genocide must be acknowledged as such, and the necessary actions to remove the genocidaires from power and try them in the International Criminal Court must be immediately taken. A strong African Union presence in Darfur, with an adequate mandate, force size, and funding, may help save civilian lives, but in January 2007, Sudanese President al-Bashir will take command of the AU, effectively neutralizing its potential to help innocents in Darfur.
A UN force would be materially opposed by Khartoum, as has been made crystal clear since the UN’s 31 August 2006 Resolution 1706: realistically, too, there is the problem of actually recruiting some 20,000 troops to send, as well as that of staunch opposition from China and Russia to saving innocent lives when it is not immediately financially beneficial. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has suggested that, with the lack of humanity’s true conviction to save lives in any immediate fashion, UN forces can be sent to the Central African Republic and Chad, at the very least: Darfuri refugees are in abundance there (500,000 in CAR and 1 million in Chad), and the fighting must no be allowed to spill into those countries any more than it already has. Al-Bashir is supporting, ideologically and with weaponry, Janjawid and Chadian rebels who wish to overthrow the current Chadian leader, Idris Deby. This manipulation of international politics must not be permitted to continue, as it is terribly dangerous for the Chadian and Darfuri people, not to mention its gross illegality.
Economic sanctions are another option, but everyone, including China, must sponsor them, and they must be immediate and strong. Sanctions would have to be properly targeted to those responsible for perpetuating the violence, and there would have to be strong convictions behind them in order to ensure that there are not loop holes. These sanctions cannot merely be from the West and be expected to be effective. As Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times wrote in a 24 October 2006 article, “firms from China, Malaysia, India, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are racing in [to Sudan]”. This renders the already established American embargoes on numerous Sudanese investments grossly ineffectual. Wealth in the form of malls, Coca-Cola, “Wal-mart-size megastore[s]”, and a five-star hotel are arising in and around Sudan, but the Darfuri people are seeing none of these oil boom profits. Indeed, Sudan is arguably the fastest growing oil exporter in the world. Despite this, the people of Darfur continue to languish in genocidal misery: it is clear that Western sanctions alone are certainly not going to do the trick. Countries such as China and Malaysia must be convinced to cease their dealings with the genocidal and rich leader of Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir.
Establishing a military no-fly zone over Darfur is an intriguing thought, as it would cut off the Janjawid’s ability to ride into villages that have already been bombed by the government. However, as Eric Reeves pointed out in a 15 October 2006 article, the government has, for example, begun painting their bombers white, which is the color of medical transports. This makes it nearly impossible to differentiate immediately between military and aid planes, which renders the idea of an effective no-fly zone almost moot.
Another intriguing idea to be explored is that of providing strong economic incentives for those willing to help stop the genocide to do so. These incentives would not only aid in stopping the violence now, but they would help create life conditions in Darfur that would, for generations to come, improve drastically the standards of living for all the Sudanese people. This requires the genocidaires in the country to first be removed from power and brought before the ICC: the UN must take this abundant proof into account and fearlessly proclaim these atrocities to be genocide. Having done this, it must obey the mandate of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and remove the genocidaires from power. Once done, economic incentives must immediately be given to the local leaders, whose power is acknowledged by the local tribes: equal amounts of financial aid should be offered to each locality. With this money, infrastructures must be built securely and efficiently, and education must take priority, along with providing equal security and medial treatment. If patterns of oppression and death arise, within tribal lines or across them, the perpetrating leader must immediately be stripped of aid, which will put him at a serious disadvantage, because neighboring communities will have greater financial power than he. Therefore, it will be in all Sudanese’s interest to bring back peace and allow refugees to return safely home. Beyond these general financial incentives to help Sudan achieve security and self-sufficiency for all its people, the international community must not become involved in anything beyond diplomacy and trade relations: when sovereignty is not being used to oppress and slaughter its people, it must be respected.
It is clearly in the entire world’s interest to put a swift halt to the genocide: not only is it the moral imperative of all humanity to ease suffering and save lives, but in some years, Sudan will become the next Afghanistan, the next Iraq. Sudan is an ideal atmosphere for terrorism to secure a base: the US shies from serious action against Khartoum because it fears losing an ‘ally’ in the ‘war on terrorism’. The US has turned away (in terms of concrete action) from the faces of the dying children of Darfur because in 1996, al-Bashir agreed to expel Osama Bin Laden from Sudan, and in the ten years since then, al-Bashir has allowed “the Sudanese intelligence agency [to seize] and [turn] over to the FBI evidence recovered in raids on suspected terrorists' homes, including fake passports”, as well as expelling a number of extremists from the country (Ken Silverstein, Los Angeles Times, 2005). Al-Bashir knows that this will keep him immune from serious US action against his government, and this was exemplified in 2001, when, in reporter Ken Silverstein’s words:
"In late September, Kansteiner and the CIA's Africa division chief held discussions with Babiker at the U.S. Embassy in London. A deal was struck. Days later, the Bush administration abstained on a vote at the United Nations, with the result that Sudan was freed from international sanctions imposed for its alleged role in efforts to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995."
Words on the part of the US (or any) government can be quite condemning, but they are not, without strong financial, political, and (unfortunately) military support, going to protect the toddlers and the elderly of Darfur from being tossed into flames while still alive.
Yet the US, along with the rest of the world, lacks the slightest bit of vision with which to see that a) the Sudanese government and their Janjawid fighters are prime examples of terrorists as it is, and b) that the refugee conditions being established in Darfur and Chad will soon become a hotbed of emerging terrorism. This generation of displaced innocence, growing up orphaned in a strange land with no food, security, or promising prospects for the future is, unless we act, destined to become tomorrow’s best candidates for terrorist recruitment. The Taliban began in frighteningly similar refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan: in Darfur and the eastern border of Chad are right now languishing the next huge wave of recruits, through no fault of their own. The world needs to help these refugees, because they are human beings suffering as no one ever should, and because if we do not help them out of this forced displacement, starvation, and constant danger of losing their lives, this will be the ‘war on terror’ my generation will suffer through.
There is government sponsored genocide occurring in Darfur, Sudan right now: the undeniable imperative of humanity is to immediately support strong words with strong actions, and to bring to trial those who have been slaughtering innocence on a massive scale.
An excerpt from Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal:
"Early in 2003, a young woman called Mariam Ahmad was stopped at a roadblock and forced to watch while the Janjawid cut the penis off her 21-day-old son, Ahmad. The child died soon after in her arms. In Bargai, a village near Zalingei, a young mother who had just given birth to twins was killed with her legs tied to her neck, exposing her genitals. Her babies were thrown into a container of boiling water that had been brought for the birth."
Three years and hundreds of thousands of lost lives later, a 6 October UNHCHR report, regarding the events of 28 August in Tirtish, Darfur:
"Reportedly, women and children were thrown into burning dwellings as they attempted to flee. Children as young as three years old, including the daughter of an interviewee, were killed in this manner. A witness reported that he personally participated in the burial of 62 people killed in Tirtish that day (he himself later fled), and estimates the total civilian death toll in the village at between 80 and 90. He reports that at least 40 people in the village, including many children, are unaccounted for."
This is the reality of Darfur, Sudan: this is the reality that we can and must change.
The contemporary history of Darfur is rich with illustrations of how and why this genocide is now occurring. In 1984, there was a fairly common drought in Sudan: the subsequent famine that developed in Darfur was utterly avoidable. However, the distant government in Khartoum has historically marginalized the Darfuri people, and the ‘84 drought was no different. The government in Darfur was incredibly weak, and Khartoum only exacerbated the problem: as documented by Gerard Prunier in his book, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, “Funds earmarked for water projects [in Darfur] had been lying for years in Port Sudan with nobody bothering to collect it, the rural water teams did not receive their salaries on time, and the relevant ministries in Khartoum simply issued glorified statistics bearing no relationship to reality”. Thus the people of Darfur starved, lacking the necessary water to lead their normal lives and to produce enough food to survive on.
In the Sudan, “Arab” tribes live mainly as nomads, while “black Africans” tend to be farmers: until this point in history, these groups had a generally symbiotic relationship. “Arab” nomads passing through a farmer’s land would graze their animals on said land, and the farmers would get traded goods from the nomads in exchange. When famine struck, however, and there was no hope of receiving life-sustaining aid from Khartoum, the Darfuri people (“Arab and “African” alike) were left to fend for themselves. Tensions between the groups escalated during this period because of the dramatic scarcity of food.
This tension was then used by Khartoum to its advantage: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Sudan’s neighbor, Libya, had immediate designs on Chad. To ensure the “Libyanization” of Chad, Gaddafi wanted to wage a proxy war in Darfur (strategically located on Chad’s eastern border and the south-eastern border of Libya). Sadiq al-Mahdi, Sudan’s leader at the time, allowed the fighting to take place in Darfur, largely because he received four MiG-23 fighter bombers for the Sudan Armed Forces from Libya (Prunier). Here began a long precedent for Khartoum using Darfur only as a battlefield to gain leverage in Chadian and Libyan ambitions, politics, and warfare.
Thousands and thousands were perishing in Darfur because of Khartoum’s lethal combination of neglecting the Darfuri people (particularly “black Africans”) and using them as pawns in international struggles. After years of organization, on 25 April 2003, the Sudan Liberation Army rebel group attacked government forces at El-Fashir and Nyala. They “killed thirty government soldiers and two officers, occupied the airport, blew up two Antonov An-12 ‘transport bombers’, and three Mil Mi-17 combat helicopters, and captured Brigadier Ibashim Bushra Ismail, the air force base commander” (Prunier). This was a job militaristically too well done, and Khartoum was frightened that these rebels, who were fighting against the marginalization and oppression of their black African tribes, posed a serious threat against their power. This rebellion could result in a total loss of Khartoum’s stronghold in the area, which would make it as vulnerable to the interference of neighboring forces as Chad was. All the “black Africans”, then, must be removed, and the tension that had been strengthened in the ‘84 famine proved easy for the government to exacerbate, pitting “Arab” Muslims against “African” Muslims: pitting human being against human being.
The government decided to use the “Arab” Janjawid militia as their means through which to commit genocide because the government army (at the time) had too many “black Africans” in it, who refused to slaughter their ethnic brethren. Further, it would be much easier to deny connections with the Janjawid, and dismiss the massive scales of rape and slaughter in Darfur as merely local ethnic complications.
Article 2 of the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (1948) specifies five actions that, when any of them are committed with genocidal intent (to be addressed presently), make the perpetrator guilty not of just any crime against humanity, but of genocide. The first of these actions are “killing members of the group”. It is an undisputed fact that the Janjawid are responsible for countless deaths in the Darfur region. These murders are on a vast scale (400,000 dead in the past three years, and this rough figure rises by about ten thousand souls every month). The second action listed is “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”. A 25 February 2006 Human Rights Watch report testifies that “Male relatives who protested [to the women getting raped] were beaten, stripped naked, tied to trees, and forced to watch the rape of the women and girls. In some cases, the men were then branded with a hot knife as a mark of their humiliation”. Another horrifically perfect example of this harm, both bodily and mental, can be found in Julie Flint and Alex de Waal’s 2005 book, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War:
"In the village of Har Jang in North Darfur in April 2004, Janjawid summarily executed a group of young men with bullets in the back of the head. One young man who was the only survivor in his family, having saved his life by hiding under a dead mule, recounted how the attackers ‘took a knife and cut my mother’s throat and threw her into the well. Then they took my oldest sister and began to rape her, one by one. My father was kneeling, crying and begging them for mercy. After that they killed my brother and finally my father. They threw the bodies in the well.’"
The last statement, about throwing human carcasses in the previously clean water well, exemplifies the third action that can constitute genocide, that is, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. The Janjawid make it close to impossible for the refugees to live, according to a 5 October 2006 Amnesty International report, “Crying Out For Darfur”:
"The land abandoned [after the Janjawid forced villagers out] did not remain vacant. The Janjawid utilized the land of the displaced for their livestock, passing through villages, making use of the untended water points, taking what was left of the agricultural produce and attacking any of the original inhabitants who attempted to return - effectively occupying the land."
The mere fact that over three million Darfuri have been forced to relocate due to attacks (often multiple times), to struggle for sustenance in the awful conditions of tattered refugee camps, is a testament to how the genocidaires are bringing about “conditions of life” that is physically destroying their target. Even the refugee camps are terribly risky places to survive in: when women go out of the camps to gather firewood, they are very often raped by Janjawid, who patrol the area to ensure that the “zurga” (“slaves”) remain in their place. Men cannot go out to get firewood, because if they do they are most often killed. Even if they are not, an event like the following, recounted by a Masalit woman from West Darfur can occur (from the same Amnesty International report):
"Sometimes we go to collect grass, to sell in the market to buy things we need for our children. They [the Janjawid] send two people, and the rest of them set up an ambush. They stop their car in a khor or a hill. Some of them act as guards. The two people then approach us and, when we see them, we run. Some of us succeed in getting away, and some are caught and taken to be raped – gang-raped. Maybe around 20 men rape one woman… Last time a number of women got caught and I do not know what was done to them – we ran.
But for the men, they put saddles on their backs when they catch them – just like donkeys. My brother was one of them. They put the saddle on his back and fastened it tightly under his belly. They put something in his behind to make it look like he had a tail. They pulled his testicles out for all to see… We found him and took him for treatment to Al-Genaina hospital…
These things are normal for us here in Darfur. These things happen all the time. I have seen rapes too. It does not matter who sees them raping the women – they don’t care. They rape women in front of their mothers and fathers."
Firewood is essential because, among other reasons, the (very) limited amount of humanitarian food aid that can reach the refugees is not edible unless it is cooked. Rape is used, then, both as a terror tactic and as a weapon of war.
The fourth way in which one can commit genocide is by “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”. Rape used as a systematic weapon may not limit the number of births per se: however, a woman who has been raped is a woman permanently marked. (This mark is often physical: the Janjawid will slash a woman so deeply in the leg that she will, in the absence of proper medical treatment, hobble for the rest of her days. Yet the deeper mark is the horrible cultural stigma associated with being raped.) Children who are deemed to be ‘Arab’ because they were conceived when a Janjawid soldier brutalized their mother are not accepted into the community, and wives are disowned by their husbands if they reveal that they were raped.
The final act of genocide listed in the Genocide Convention of 1948 is “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. Ten thousand people are dying every month in Darfur, and a very large percentage of these are children under five, having been forced from their villages by their fellow human beings. Even more directly, the Janjawid has made a habit of sporadically capturing not only women, but also children, to hold for a time among them as sex slaves. On 19 July 2004, Amnesty International released another harrowing report about the situation in Darfur, here relaying the account of a sixty-six year old Darfuri:
"They took K.M., who is 12 years old in the open air. Her father was killed by the Janjawid in Um Baru, the rest of the family ran away and she was captured by the Janjawid who were on horse back. More than six people used her as a wife; she stayed with the Janjawid and the military more than 10 days. K, another woman who is married, aged 18, ran away but was captured by the Janjawid who slept with her in the open place, all of them slept with her. She is still with them. A, a teacher, told me that they broke her leg after raping her."
These are the actions of the Janjawid militias: however, to truly constitute genocide, it is true that the Genocide Convention does also mandate these inhuman and criminal acts must be committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”. This intent can be undeniably established in the case of the Janjawid and their leader, Musa Hilal. In a 2004 directive, sent out from the offices of Hilal himself, the order was given to “change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes”. Further, according to directives issued by the Executive Committee of the Arab Gathering (which Hilal supports), “zurga” areas need to be cleansed by Arabs, namely “to stop production in these areas, to eliminate their leaders...[and] to ensure their disunity” by 2020 (de Waal, Flint). Displaced Darfuri survivors in Chadian and Darfuri refugee camps claim, when the Janjawid destroyed their villages, that they were commonly heard shouting things such as “all the Blacks must die” (Prunier). Amnesty International recently interviewed a Masalit woman from West Darfur, who also claimed that “The Janjaweed told [her]: ‘You are a Nuba woman, daughter of a whore. You have no right to these cattle and they do not belong to you’”. So saying, they killed the man she was with and took off with their cattle.
The Janjawid are also often reported to tell their victims that the land “now belong[s] to the Arabs”. A survivor of a 2003 Janjawid attack on Jafal reported that the Janjawid said to the villagers “You are Black, you are like slaves. Then the Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs. The government is on our side. The government plane is on our side, it gives us food and ammunition” (Prunier). It is clear, then, that the actions of the Janjawid are not only horrible and inhuman: they also constitute genocide, because the intent behind them is certainly consistent with the desire to “destroy, in whole or in part, members of a[n]...ethnical...group”.
Yet the crimes do not stop with the Janjawid. The government of Sudan, too, is plainly guilty of the crime of genocide. The Janjawid militias, acting alone, would not have the military means with which to destroy lives and villages as they do. According to Peter Takirambudde in a 6 September 2006 Human Rights Watch report, “Government forces are bombing villages with blatant disregard for human rights”. These very same civilian lives are the ones the Janjawid are slaughtering with everything from machetes to rocket-propelled grenades. Accounts from a 2004 Amnesty International report by survivors subsisting near the Chadian border with Darfur typify attacks on their old homes:
"The Arabs [Janjawid] and the government forces arrived on both sides of the village with vehicles...There was also a [government] helicopter and an Antonov plane. They shelled the town with more than two hundred shells... Then the [Janjawid] burnt all our houses and took all the goods from the market."
A similar take from a different village:
"The Janjawid were accompanied by soldiers. They attacked people, saying: ‘You are the opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are Black, you are like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs. The government is on our side. The government plane is on our side, it gives us food and ammunition."
These numerous and highly consistent refugee reports seem to underline the UN’s own 31 August Panel of Experts report, which stated:
"The Janjawid/armed militias appear to have upgraded their modus operandi from horses, camels, and AK-47s to land cruisers, pick-up trucks and rocket-propelled grenades. Reliable sources indicate that the Janjawid continue to be subsumed into the [government’s] Popular Defense Force...evident is their ability to coordinate with the Sudanese armed forces in perpetrating attacks on villages and to engage in armed conflict with rebel groups."
This is certainly consistent with the fact that Khartoum is granted over one billion dollars worth of weaponry per year from China in exchange for oil deals (Amnesty International), and with Refugee International’s conclusion that:
China National Petroleum Corporation contributes Chinese-made tanks, fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, firearms, and ammunition to the Sudanese military and SSDF [the Khartoum-backed militia forces in southern Sudan]. China has also established three arms factories in Sudan.
These arms deliveries seem to be getting through to the Janjawid militias, and their leader, Musa Hilal, certainly has not denied his connection with the government. In an interview with Human Rights Watch on 27 September 2004, Hilal repeatedly stated that “All of the people in the field are led by top army commanders...[The Janjawid he commands] get their orders from the Western command center and from Khartoum”. Further, a 28 August 2006 UNHCHR report seems to acknowledge the government’s direct involvement in the genocide:
"The [recent bombing in Buram, South Darfur] campaign, marked by widespread targeting of civilians from tribes that are locally referred to as being of African origin, wholesale burning of villages, looting and forced displacement, appears to have been conducted with the knowledge and material support of the Government atrocities."
The government is not merely complicit in the genocide, however (even though ‘mere’ “complicity in genocide” is punishable by Article 3 of the Genocide Convention): it is the driving force behind it. Starvation is being used by the government as a deadlier weapon than any rocket-propelled grenade in this genocide. There are between 300,000 and 500,000 metric tons of grain that Khartoum keeps tucked away in reserve, while millions of its own people are starving, relying on the international food aid that the government also tries to keep from the people. Sudan expert Eric Reeves stated in a 13 May 2006 report that only 17,000 metric tons of food would be needed to feed a million people for a month. Yet none of the 7,000 children under age five that perish each month in Darfur, often from malnutrition, ever see that stored grain. USAID said in a report from May 2006 that Khartoum sets food prices so high that it is cheaper for starving Darfuri to waste away whilst waiting for international food aid to reach them. This aid is being choked, however, as refugee camps become more and more inaccessible to foreign aid workers. Twelve aid workers have been killed in Darfur in the last few months, and Dr. Denis Lamasson of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans FrontiPres has said, “MSF has experienced four major incidents. While I was visiting Mornay, a team arrived. They had been attacked and beaten on the road and their car struck by gunfire. The team was lucky to make it back”. The World Food Program has been forced to half its distributions, and as a result, 355,000 people went without necessary food aid in August alone.
Targeted starvation as, essentially, a genocidal weapon of mass destruction is being used by the Sudanese government right now, at the brink of the 21st century: and the world is merely watching. Indeed, “the present conflict seems to be an attempt to remove the tribes of African origin and make it an entirely Arab tribe area. This was reportedly done with the assumption that any international troops would focus on maintaining the status quo in the area” (UNHCHR, 28 August 2006). The international community must utilize all the information at its fingertips, contemporary history and that of years past, that of Sudan and of WWII Europe, 1980s and 90s Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda. This genocide must be acknowledged as such, and the necessary actions to remove the genocidaires from power and try them in the International Criminal Court must be immediately taken. A strong African Union presence in Darfur, with an adequate mandate, force size, and funding, may help save civilian lives, but in January 2007, Sudanese President al-Bashir will take command of the AU, effectively neutralizing its potential to help innocents in Darfur.
A UN force would be materially opposed by Khartoum, as has been made crystal clear since the UN’s 31 August 2006 Resolution 1706: realistically, too, there is the problem of actually recruiting some 20,000 troops to send, as well as that of staunch opposition from China and Russia to saving innocent lives when it is not immediately financially beneficial. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has suggested that, with the lack of humanity’s true conviction to save lives in any immediate fashion, UN forces can be sent to the Central African Republic and Chad, at the very least: Darfuri refugees are in abundance there (500,000 in CAR and 1 million in Chad), and the fighting must no be allowed to spill into those countries any more than it already has. Al-Bashir is supporting, ideologically and with weaponry, Janjawid and Chadian rebels who wish to overthrow the current Chadian leader, Idris Deby. This manipulation of international politics must not be permitted to continue, as it is terribly dangerous for the Chadian and Darfuri people, not to mention its gross illegality.
Economic sanctions are another option, but everyone, including China, must sponsor them, and they must be immediate and strong. Sanctions would have to be properly targeted to those responsible for perpetuating the violence, and there would have to be strong convictions behind them in order to ensure that there are not loop holes. These sanctions cannot merely be from the West and be expected to be effective. As Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times wrote in a 24 October 2006 article, “firms from China, Malaysia, India, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates are racing in [to Sudan]”. This renders the already established American embargoes on numerous Sudanese investments grossly ineffectual. Wealth in the form of malls, Coca-Cola, “Wal-mart-size megastore[s]”, and a five-star hotel are arising in and around Sudan, but the Darfuri people are seeing none of these oil boom profits. Indeed, Sudan is arguably the fastest growing oil exporter in the world. Despite this, the people of Darfur continue to languish in genocidal misery: it is clear that Western sanctions alone are certainly not going to do the trick. Countries such as China and Malaysia must be convinced to cease their dealings with the genocidal and rich leader of Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir.
Establishing a military no-fly zone over Darfur is an intriguing thought, as it would cut off the Janjawid’s ability to ride into villages that have already been bombed by the government. However, as Eric Reeves pointed out in a 15 October 2006 article, the government has, for example, begun painting their bombers white, which is the color of medical transports. This makes it nearly impossible to differentiate immediately between military and aid planes, which renders the idea of an effective no-fly zone almost moot.
Another intriguing idea to be explored is that of providing strong economic incentives for those willing to help stop the genocide to do so. These incentives would not only aid in stopping the violence now, but they would help create life conditions in Darfur that would, for generations to come, improve drastically the standards of living for all the Sudanese people. This requires the genocidaires in the country to first be removed from power and brought before the ICC: the UN must take this abundant proof into account and fearlessly proclaim these atrocities to be genocide. Having done this, it must obey the mandate of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and remove the genocidaires from power. Once done, economic incentives must immediately be given to the local leaders, whose power is acknowledged by the local tribes: equal amounts of financial aid should be offered to each locality. With this money, infrastructures must be built securely and efficiently, and education must take priority, along with providing equal security and medial treatment. If patterns of oppression and death arise, within tribal lines or across them, the perpetrating leader must immediately be stripped of aid, which will put him at a serious disadvantage, because neighboring communities will have greater financial power than he. Therefore, it will be in all Sudanese’s interest to bring back peace and allow refugees to return safely home. Beyond these general financial incentives to help Sudan achieve security and self-sufficiency for all its people, the international community must not become involved in anything beyond diplomacy and trade relations: when sovereignty is not being used to oppress and slaughter its people, it must be respected.
It is clearly in the entire world’s interest to put a swift halt to the genocide: not only is it the moral imperative of all humanity to ease suffering and save lives, but in some years, Sudan will become the next Afghanistan, the next Iraq. Sudan is an ideal atmosphere for terrorism to secure a base: the US shies from serious action against Khartoum because it fears losing an ‘ally’ in the ‘war on terrorism’. The US has turned away (in terms of concrete action) from the faces of the dying children of Darfur because in 1996, al-Bashir agreed to expel Osama Bin Laden from Sudan, and in the ten years since then, al-Bashir has allowed “the Sudanese intelligence agency [to seize] and [turn] over to the FBI evidence recovered in raids on suspected terrorists' homes, including fake passports”, as well as expelling a number of extremists from the country (Ken Silverstein, Los Angeles Times, 2005). Al-Bashir knows that this will keep him immune from serious US action against his government, and this was exemplified in 2001, when, in reporter Ken Silverstein’s words:
"In late September, Kansteiner and the CIA's Africa division chief held discussions with Babiker at the U.S. Embassy in London. A deal was struck. Days later, the Bush administration abstained on a vote at the United Nations, with the result that Sudan was freed from international sanctions imposed for its alleged role in efforts to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995."
Words on the part of the US (or any) government can be quite condemning, but they are not, without strong financial, political, and (unfortunately) military support, going to protect the toddlers and the elderly of Darfur from being tossed into flames while still alive.
Yet the US, along with the rest of the world, lacks the slightest bit of vision with which to see that a) the Sudanese government and their Janjawid fighters are prime examples of terrorists as it is, and b) that the refugee conditions being established in Darfur and Chad will soon become a hotbed of emerging terrorism. This generation of displaced innocence, growing up orphaned in a strange land with no food, security, or promising prospects for the future is, unless we act, destined to become tomorrow’s best candidates for terrorist recruitment. The Taliban began in frighteningly similar refugee camps on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan: in Darfur and the eastern border of Chad are right now languishing the next huge wave of recruits, through no fault of their own. The world needs to help these refugees, because they are human beings suffering as no one ever should, and because if we do not help them out of this forced displacement, starvation, and constant danger of losing their lives, this will be the ‘war on terror’ my generation will suffer through.
There is government sponsored genocide occurring in Darfur, Sudan right now: the undeniable imperative of humanity is to immediately support strong words with strong actions, and to bring to trial those who have been slaughtering innocence on a massive scale.
An excerpt from Darfur: A Short History of a Long War, by Julie Flint and Alex de Waal:
"Early in 2003, a young woman called Mariam Ahmad was stopped at a roadblock and forced to watch while the Janjawid cut the penis off her 21-day-old son, Ahmad. The child died soon after in her arms. In Bargai, a village near Zalingei, a young mother who had just given birth to twins was killed with her legs tied to her neck, exposing her genitals. Her babies were thrown into a container of boiling water that had been brought for the birth."
Three years and hundreds of thousands of lost lives later, a 6 October UNHCHR report, regarding the events of 28 August in Tirtish, Darfur:
"Reportedly, women and children were thrown into burning dwellings as they attempted to flee. Children as young as three years old, including the daughter of an interviewee, were killed in this manner. A witness reported that he personally participated in the burial of 62 people killed in Tirtish that day (he himself later fled), and estimates the total civilian death toll in the village at between 80 and 90. He reports that at least 40 people in the village, including many children, are unaccounted for."
This is the reality of Darfur, Sudan: this is the reality that we can and must change.
What's Up With Darfur, Anyway?
The following is a brief crash course through some of the relevant history of the Darfur region of Sudan: one cannot hope to stem the bloodshed of infants if one does not have a grasp of the causes behind the deadly ailment...
- The people of Darfur (the western region of Sudan) have been historically either marginalized or used in brutal ways by the government in Khartoum (far away on the eastern side of Sudan).
- 1960s-70s - Colonel Gaddafi from Libya (north-western border of Darfur) wanted to create a pan-Arab state - his first step was to overthrow the Chadian government (western border of Darfur). He armed people in Darfur to fight against “black” tribes (you know how the West drew bizarre borders in Africa after WWII that didn’t respect tribal boundaries, etc? Well, there are some “black” tribes which were split by the border between Darfur/Sudan and Chad, so tribal loyalties exist across internationally established borders) in Chad. In response, the Chadian government armed its tribal connections in Darfur to resist the Libyans, and a very bloody proxy war ensued. The Sudanese government in Khartoum allowed this to happen because Libya paid the government in weaponry and cash to do so.
- 1984 - There was a drought in the region, and Khartoum could have but did not help the Darfuri people get food. A famine ensued. Traditionally, “Arab” nomadic folk in Darfur had grazed their animals on “African” farmland, and everyone was alright with that because there was trading that occurred and it was beneficial for everyone. During the famine, though, the “African” farmers didn’t want to share their crop because there was hardly enough for them, so obviously conflict arose. The conflict was not ethnic, it was regional and economic, but Khartoum saw it and took advantage, continuing to try and convince the “Arabs” that the “Africans” were not letting them graze on their land because they were trying to kill them, etc. I keep using quotes because those terms are general and do not respect tribal subtleties, but they are accurate enough for our purposes.
- 1989 - Current President al-Bashir took power, dissolving parliament and all opposition parties
- 1994 - Darfur fell victim to, essentially, government gerrymandering - Khartoum split Darfur into a Western, Southern, and Northern state, so that the overall “African” majority of the Fur tribe became, in each new state, a minority. The “Africans” were brutally oppressed and often forced to fight a war in Southern Sudan that they had nothing to do with.
- 25 April 2003 - The oppressed folk had been organizing for years, and on this date, staged a militaristically brilliant attack on government forces in order to gain economic and political credence. The government was scared out of its mind because Darfur had always been a buffer zone and an area to fight proxy wars with Libya and Chad - if the Darfuri “Africans” were staging attacks, Chadian forces would probably help them take over the Khartoum government. So they unleashed an “Arab” militia, the Janjaweed, to do more than suppress the insurgency: the orders were to rid the land of the “African slaves” - you get the picture.
- So now, 7,000 kids under age five are dying per month. There are 2.5 million internally displaced refugees in Darfur, and over 500,000 refugees in Chad. The government is helping the Janjaweed rape women and slaughter babies, while the conflict is becoming fast a part of an international war with Chad - Sudanese president al-Bashir is again trying to overthrow the Chadian government. Rape and starvation are used as weapons of war and 13 international aid workers have been killed in the last few months.
- The genocidal bloodshed has (quite literally) spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic. The Sudanese government recently seemed to agree to some form of United Nations assistance in achieving stability in the region, which it had resisted vehemently for some time. This tentative agreement, however, is as useless as the Darfur Peace Agreement that was signed on 5 May 2006 (since that date, the violence has escalated dramatically). However, within forty-eight hours of the meeting in which Khartoum agreed to UN assistance with Darfur, over fifty civilians, including children, were butchered by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed. Journalists are being separated from their permits (which often are the only things standing between them and prison) at a rapid rate, and international aid agencies continue to be forced out of the country at an alarming rate. Within the last few days, seven young girls were burnt alive: a common fate for the very young and the very old who were born to "African" parents in Darfur and Chad.
- The people of Darfur (the western region of Sudan) have been historically either marginalized or used in brutal ways by the government in Khartoum (far away on the eastern side of Sudan).
- 1960s-70s - Colonel Gaddafi from Libya (north-western border of Darfur) wanted to create a pan-Arab state - his first step was to overthrow the Chadian government (western border of Darfur). He armed people in Darfur to fight against “black” tribes (you know how the West drew bizarre borders in Africa after WWII that didn’t respect tribal boundaries, etc? Well, there are some “black” tribes which were split by the border between Darfur/Sudan and Chad, so tribal loyalties exist across internationally established borders) in Chad. In response, the Chadian government armed its tribal connections in Darfur to resist the Libyans, and a very bloody proxy war ensued. The Sudanese government in Khartoum allowed this to happen because Libya paid the government in weaponry and cash to do so.
- 1984 - There was a drought in the region, and Khartoum could have but did not help the Darfuri people get food. A famine ensued. Traditionally, “Arab” nomadic folk in Darfur had grazed their animals on “African” farmland, and everyone was alright with that because there was trading that occurred and it was beneficial for everyone. During the famine, though, the “African” farmers didn’t want to share their crop because there was hardly enough for them, so obviously conflict arose. The conflict was not ethnic, it was regional and economic, but Khartoum saw it and took advantage, continuing to try and convince the “Arabs” that the “Africans” were not letting them graze on their land because they were trying to kill them, etc. I keep using quotes because those terms are general and do not respect tribal subtleties, but they are accurate enough for our purposes.
- 1989 - Current President al-Bashir took power, dissolving parliament and all opposition parties
- 1994 - Darfur fell victim to, essentially, government gerrymandering - Khartoum split Darfur into a Western, Southern, and Northern state, so that the overall “African” majority of the Fur tribe became, in each new state, a minority. The “Africans” were brutally oppressed and often forced to fight a war in Southern Sudan that they had nothing to do with.
- 25 April 2003 - The oppressed folk had been organizing for years, and on this date, staged a militaristically brilliant attack on government forces in order to gain economic and political credence. The government was scared out of its mind because Darfur had always been a buffer zone and an area to fight proxy wars with Libya and Chad - if the Darfuri “Africans” were staging attacks, Chadian forces would probably help them take over the Khartoum government. So they unleashed an “Arab” militia, the Janjaweed, to do more than suppress the insurgency: the orders were to rid the land of the “African slaves” - you get the picture.
- So now, 7,000 kids under age five are dying per month. There are 2.5 million internally displaced refugees in Darfur, and over 500,000 refugees in Chad. The government is helping the Janjaweed rape women and slaughter babies, while the conflict is becoming fast a part of an international war with Chad - Sudanese president al-Bashir is again trying to overthrow the Chadian government. Rape and starvation are used as weapons of war and 13 international aid workers have been killed in the last few months.
- The genocidal bloodshed has (quite literally) spilled into Chad and the Central African Republic. The Sudanese government recently seemed to agree to some form of United Nations assistance in achieving stability in the region, which it had resisted vehemently for some time. This tentative agreement, however, is as useless as the Darfur Peace Agreement that was signed on 5 May 2006 (since that date, the violence has escalated dramatically). However, within forty-eight hours of the meeting in which Khartoum agreed to UN assistance with Darfur, over fifty civilians, including children, were butchered by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed. Journalists are being separated from their permits (which often are the only things standing between them and prison) at a rapid rate, and international aid agencies continue to be forced out of the country at an alarming rate. Within the last few days, seven young girls were burnt alive: a common fate for the very young and the very old who were born to "African" parents in Darfur and Chad.
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