Sudan's Darfur — Hell without the cameras
UNITED NATIONS — The streams of nearly one million refugees fleeing “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo dominated the headlines five years ago. The graphic scenes of this last chapter of the brutal Balkan wars became a media staple during May 1999, as Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbs were emptying Kosovo province of its ethnic Albanian Muslims. Media images transfixed world attention and finally the USA and NATO summoned the collective courage to stop the carnage.
Today in Sudan’s western reaches, a frightfully similar if not starker carnage unfolds as the Arab rulers are ethnically cleansing black Africans from the Darfur region. This desolate region, far from the cameras, consciousness, and concerns become a sanguinary side show in a world accustomed to and numbed by horror and hate. Sudan’s hideous ethnic cleansing would make Milosevic blush.
According to a stark assessment by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch—Darfur Destroyed, “The government of Sudan is responsible for ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in western in Darfur one of the world’s poorest and most inaccessible regions. The Sudanese government and the Arab Janjaweed militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian population of African ethnic groups.”
Beyond mass killings and systematic rape, the Sudanese have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers into camps and resettlement in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival—more than 110,000 other have fled to neighboring Chad.
Based on assessments made by visits to the forsaken region, Human Rights Watch report adds that the Sudanese government and the militia have participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians, and burning of towns and villages.
Contrary to the more well publicized crisis facing black African Christians in southern Sudan and the hands of the Islamic regime in Khartoum, the conflicts here ironically involves intra-religious conflict. Both sides are Muslims — one Arab nomads, the other black African farmers. The farmers want local political autonomy and a share of Sudan’s growing oil wealth; Khartoum wishes to “export the problem” by turning residents into refugees.
According to Human Rights Watch, “The Sudan government has engaged in the systematic destruction of mosques and the desecration of articles of Islam in Darfur. The African Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa (tribes) of Dafur unlike the African population of southern Sudan are Muslims.” Most belong to a Sufi sect of Islam.
The regime and its Janjaweed militia allies have killed “killed imams, destroyed mosques and prayers mats and in some villages they have torn up and defecated on Korans.” The Arab militia has burned at least 65 mosques.
As you may imagine the UN Security Council remains “deeply concerned” about these human rights abuses but has done little to stop them. Jan Egeland Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs briefed the Council on Darfur describing the situation as one of “ethnic cleansing.”
Later Secretary General Kofi Annan addressing the UN Human Right Commission in Geneva on the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide (800,000 killed in ethnic fighting) “Whatever terms it uses to describe the situation, the international community cannot stand idle.” Indeed! The UN recently sent a fact-finding team to Sudan which reported a “reign of terror” to the Council only to see consideration delayed for another month.
The respected French humanitarian society Doctors Without Borders (MSF) moreover criticized UN relief efforts as “painfully slow.”
Ironically Sudan recently gained a coveted seat on the Human Rights Commission in Geneva!
Though an old Soviet client state in the 1970’s, let’s not forget that the Khartoum regime later provided a safe haven for Al Qaida terrorists in the 1990’s and currently still hosts a plethora of radical Islamic fundamentalist elements.
The Bush Administration remains a strong advocate for resolving the human rights catastrophe in Sudan. Human Rights Watch states, “The U.S. government has taken the strongest public stance on Darfur on any individual government, with repeated statements condemning the human rights abuses.”
“There can be no doubt about the Sudanese government’s culpability in crimes against humanity in Darfur,” warned Human Rights Watch’s Peter Takirambudde, who implored, “The Security Council must not ignore the brutal facts.”
Until that time, Darfur has emerged as Hell without the cameras.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.  |
