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.