Posted on 05/18/2004 5:27:35 AM PDT by SJackson
After the genocide in Rwanda a decade ago, the world's moralists said "never again." Well, it is happening again, this time in Sudan, but once more the United Nations, the Arab world and Europe are failing to speak up, much less to act.
As the rainy season starts again in that East African nation, the U.S. Agency for International Development -- the largest food donor to Sudan -- fears hundreds of thousands of people will die over the next nine months. This is no ordinary famine but part of the Sudanese regime's campaign against the African tribes in Darfur, a "strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation," according to a U.N. report that was initially suppressed so as not to offend Khartoum. Already some 30,000 people have been killed by Sudanese troops and Arab militias known as the Jingaweit.
The attacks often start with air bombardments, followed by ground troops and the Jingaweit. Women and even little girls are routinely raped. The attackers burn villages and destroy water supplies and food stocks. The result is the depopulation of wide swathes of land, which the Arab tribesmen then take over. Already one-fifth of the population in an area the size of France is on the run.
Some 120,000 have escaped to neighboring Chad, where aid agencies are at least allowed to feed the hungry, though the rain will make this a logistical nightmare. Especially worrisome is the fate of about one million refugees displaced inside Sudan. Aid workers are begging Khartoum for access to the region, but even those few supplies allowed into Darfur are often looted by the militia.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has raised the alarm about Sudan, but once again the "international community" is proving to be feckless, and the Bush Administration has been isolated in its attempts to raise international pressure on Khartoum. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has refused to condemn the Sudanese regime. But what can you expect from a body that includes Cuba, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and, yes, Sudan? When Sudan was re-elected to the Commission on May 4, the American envoy was alone in walking out on what he called this "absurdity."
....snip....
The depredations at Darfur are the same ones Khartoum practiced in its 20-year war against the south. An estimated two million people died there as Africans were butchered and enslaved. Khartoum entered into peace negotiations only because the southern rebels had become too strong. That conflict pitted Muslim Arabs in Khartoum against black Christians and Animists, but in Darfur the black Africans are also Muslims, though mostly belonging to the Sufi sect. Yet the Muslim world and Arab League remain silent about this slaughter of their co-religionists.
The Khartoum regime knows that an America already tied down by two wars cannot intervene militarily in Darfur. So it kills with impunity as the rest of the world turns away, saving its outrage for the abuses by a few Americans at Abu Ghraib.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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Ahh yes.....Islam.
"Religion of peace"
Situation in Europe? Everybody hates the Jews and supports their enemies.
Situation in Sudan? What? Is anything going on?
Evil exists. The leaders (like George W. Bush) who are willing to take a stand against it, are few and far between. Organizations like the UN might talk a good game, but they won't even suit up when there's trouble.
The UN...again.
bump for pm issue
Paging the Reverend Jessee Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus.
YOO HOO? Anybody home?
No? Figures, you uncle Toms have shown your true colors.
Kofi will be right over as soon as he gets the oil for food thingy covered up.
American Blacks better listen and wise up. Arab Muslims are having a killing field day in the Sudan slaughtering African Black Muslims. Fact is the Arabs hate Blacks just as much as they hate Jews, Christians, Americans, etc. Shoot, they hate themselves, Shites, Suuni's, etc. I would be careful about voting for John Kerry if I were a Black person for a number of good reasons, but I'd really not vote for him, because if the terrorists get loose here in the USA, which they will if Kerry is elected, your Afican-American butts are going to be toast right along with all Jews and Christians!
Arab Muslims' racist war on Africa is a HUGE issue that's been ignored for some time. If left unchecked, that will be the next front for the War on Terrorism as terrorists increasingly set up shop there. I'm incensed that liberal black leaders and black folks generally have been missing in action on this issue. If ANYONE in America should be howling about slavery still going down, it should be us. Min. Louis Farrakhan's silence is telling. He preaches pro-blackness, but ain't got squat to say when black folks are being slaughtered in Sudan? Instead, he backs the Sudanese government. Shameful. However, some of us are raising the issue but folks care more about Iraq and Haiti.
Taking the long view of history, let's not forget that Islam separates the world into two: those that "submit" to Islam and those that do not. Islam's war on Africa has gone on and off for quite a few centuries now. While most are not Arab in origin, there are increased Muslim flare-ups on the African continent: Sudan, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, the list goes on. Islam CANNOT be allowed to go unchecked.
However, I'd dispute your contention that Arab Muslims hate blacks as much as Jews and white Christians -- not quite. Their hatred for Jews is in a class by itself. Based on my travels abroad, it's white Americans that get the brunt of world hatred against USA (although with U.S. foreign policy taking on a black face with Powell and Rice, this is starting to change). Not to be pissy, but I've been treated quite well when I go abroad.
Let's not forget that recently, various Arab Muslim nations blocked U.N. action against Sudan. Now where were liberals about THIS mess?
Very good post! Thanks!
bump and thanks!
"See No Evil in Sudan--Look who's ignoring another African genocide.
The wall Street journal and FreeRepublic.com
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Thanks for a great post.
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