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February 5, 2006
Darfur - 'Genocide in Slow Motion'
Topics: Darfur
The conflict began in the arid and impoverished region early in 2003 after a rebel group began attacking government targets, claiming that the region was being neglected by Khartoum. The rebels say the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. The killing in Darfur, which is a vast region in western Sudan, doesn't involve religious persecution, since the killers as well as the victims of the genocide are Muslim. But, like the Christian and animist parts of southern Sudan, Darfur has traditionally been neglected by the Arabs (and before them, the British) who held power in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
Today, systematic murder, rape, and mutilation are taking place on a vast scale, based simply on the tribe of the victim. To witness it is to immediately understand why many believe that genocide is the worst evil of which human beings are capable. The international community has dithered in the past, as Armenians, Jews, Bosnians, and others were being slaughtered, you realize that the pattern today is almost exactly the same. Each time the chant would be "never again." However, once again, the international response has been to debate whether the word "genocide" is really appropriate, to point out that the situation is immensely complex, to shrug that it's horrifying but that there's nothing much we can do. The slogan "Never Again" is being transformed into "One More Time."
After the UN Security Council decided on Friday to deploy peacekeepers, part of a push by the Bush Administration to use its month-long presidency of the council to reinvigorate peace efforts in Darfur, exhausted refugees are building ramshackle shelters in a dry river bed after 55,000 people fled a raid mounted by the Janjaweed militia. It was the biggest movement of refugees in Darfur so far this year. The victims, many of whom have fled attacks twice or even three times before, are camped around the town of Menawashi in Southern Darfur province.
UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has appealed to governments with advanced militaries, primarily the US and the European powers, to take part in a new peacekeeping mission in Darfur, but wasn't he there in May 2005 and afterwards called for "rapid action" to end violence in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, during a visit that he described as "heart-wrenching"? What took the UN so long to act?
Will we finally begin to see an end to the genocide in Darfur, now that the U.S. presidency of the council?
Someone please tell me why we continue to look to the UN to solve problems that they have proven to be incapable of handling, time and time again!
Posted by Richard at February 5, 2006 9:04 AM
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- Darfur - 'Genocide in Slow Motion' - Feb 05, 2006
