More Focus Needed on Darfur
Noa Landes
Issue date: 2/14/06 Section: Opinions
I am not sure how to begin this article. I have opened with the history of the conflict and civil war in Sudan that has been going on for over 20 years. That seemed too indirect. I tried again, but what appeared was more like a television commercial that you would probably ignore: "Every day, while you go about your lives, about 500 people in the Darfur region of Sudan lose theirs." So, I don't know how to begin, or where, but I do know that I have to start. I have to speak out
The history of the war in Sudan is long and horrifying. It literally makes you sick to think about it. If you look at the whole thing at once, it is too overwhelming, too disastrous: its sheer scale risks eliciting passivity and resignation. And, after all, this is an internal conflict in a distant country. Why should we step in? But the conflict in the Darfur region has taken on a new dimension; it has shifted from internal conflict to, more precisely, genocide. And the outsiders do not intervene, the armed insiders will succeed in demolishing an ethnic minority in their midst.
Soon after Sudan gained independence from England and Egypt in 1955, the North and the South began a conflict that has become the longest running civil war ever recorded. The country is divided along racial and religious lines: the Arab/Muslim North and the Christian and Animist/African South. Since 1983, about four million people have been displaced and over two million have died in the conflict.
The Darfur region in western Sudan is about the size of Texas. The conflict there rages between the government backed militia, the Janjaweed, and the local farming villagers. The Janjaweed target African tribes in the area who are themselves Muslim. The Sudanese government not only supports the Janjaweed but participates in bombings of civilians, looting cattle and crops, abductions of women and children, extrajudicial executions and the destruction of entire villages.
The human rights violations in Darfur have hideous similarities to the genocide a decade ago in Rwanda, which President Clinton refused to involve our government in. Villages are stormed, men murdered with rifles and machetes, women and children are raped, kidnapped and murdered. Rape is used as a murder weapon as well, spreading HIV and AIDS. Those who do survive are left with little choice but to flee to refugee camps that have no room, food or aid to provide. Many humanitarian groups in Darfur have had to leave because the escalating violence threatens their workers, leaving it up to the Sudanese government and the United Nations to help. You can guess how much aid the refugees are receiving from them.
The history of the war in Sudan is long and horrifying. It literally makes you sick to think about it. If you look at the whole thing at once, it is too overwhelming, too disastrous: its sheer scale risks eliciting passivity and resignation. And, after all, this is an internal conflict in a distant country. Why should we step in? But the conflict in the Darfur region has taken on a new dimension; it has shifted from internal conflict to, more precisely, genocide. And the outsiders do not intervene, the armed insiders will succeed in demolishing an ethnic minority in their midst.
Soon after Sudan gained independence from England and Egypt in 1955, the North and the South began a conflict that has become the longest running civil war ever recorded. The country is divided along racial and religious lines: the Arab/Muslim North and the Christian and Animist/African South. Since 1983, about four million people have been displaced and over two million have died in the conflict.
The Darfur region in western Sudan is about the size of Texas. The conflict there rages between the government backed militia, the Janjaweed, and the local farming villagers. The Janjaweed target African tribes in the area who are themselves Muslim. The Sudanese government not only supports the Janjaweed but participates in bombings of civilians, looting cattle and crops, abductions of women and children, extrajudicial executions and the destruction of entire villages.
The human rights violations in Darfur have hideous similarities to the genocide a decade ago in Rwanda, which President Clinton refused to involve our government in. Villages are stormed, men murdered with rifles and machetes, women and children are raped, kidnapped and murdered. Rape is used as a murder weapon as well, spreading HIV and AIDS. Those who do survive are left with little choice but to flee to refugee camps that have no room, food or aid to provide. Many humanitarian groups in Darfur have had to leave because the escalating violence threatens their workers, leaving it up to the Sudanese government and the United Nations to help. You can guess how much aid the refugees are receiving from them.
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