WE'RE GOING TO TAKE THINGS AWAY FROM YOU
Posted on 07/05/2004 7:35:41 AM PDT by Clive
Two of the almost 200,000 Sudanese refugees who fled Arab militiamen into Chad make a dusty trip yesterday at the Koumouangou refugee camp. Many have perished. CAMP IRIDIMI, Chad -- Clouds of sand billow around flimsy shelters that dot the parched and desolate plains. As the wind picks up, women lift the folds of their brilliant pink, blue and green veils to shield their faces from the enveloping dust.
Nearly 200,000 terrified villagers have sought sanctuary in one of the most inhospitable areas on Earth, the deserts of Chad, near the border of Sudan. They are some of the more than 1 million people chased from their homes in the past 16 months in what humanitarian workers call a systematic campaign of terror in Sudan's Darfur region.
Over and over, they tell the same story. First airplanes and helicopters came and bombed their villages. Then gun- and sword-wielding militiamen came galloping in on horse and camelback - burning, looting, raping and killing.
"They killed my husband. They killed my children. They burned my house. They stole my cattle," Aza Jumah Tedel wept into her veil.
Tedel fled into the desert with her two surviving children, trekking 12 days on a donkey to reach the Chad border. There she waited for a month until the U.N. refugee agency took her by truck to camp Iridimi, about 65 kilometres west of the border.
"There was no food, no water," said Dabaiye Omar Saleh, another camp resident whose husband was shot before her eyes in a militia raid. "If we found a puddle by the side of the road, we scooped it up with our hands."
Tens of thousands have made the same journey, a desperate flight through the desert by Arab herders bent on chasing their African farming neighbours from the vast western region, the size of Iraq.
"The 15,000 people who are here have lost everything," U.N. Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said as he toured Iridimi with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan this week. "They were bombed, they were hunted down by the most hideous campaign of terror."
Not everyone survives.
South of Iridimi is camp Kouloungou, a collection of tents on a windswept and rocky plain. Among the graves in a village cemetery on the edge of camp are 28 new mounds of dirt marked by stones. Many are small.
Camp residents said some contain adults, but most harbour children, who perished from thirst and disease.
Many who arrive here had fled for their lives with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. One woman, 20-year-old Khadija Abakar, held her nursing baby on her hip. "We left everything behind," she said. "I don't even have a cup to drink from."
She is one of about 100 people sitting under shelters made of branches, waiting to eat and to be allocated tents. They were in a convoy of 284 people who arrived the night before.
Her village had been attacked as everyone else's had. She said she made it to the border and was picked up by U.N. workers and trucked about 80 kilometres to camp Kouloungou.
U.N. and aid workers have battled to keep up with refugees flooding across the 600-kilometre border between Darfur and Chad. Darfur is the region in western Sudan where the government has been accused of unleashing armed militias on the local population to quell a rebel uprising.
Despite an April ceasefire between the Sudanese government and two-rebel groups, militia raids on civilians continue, sending more people fleeing for their lives, U.N. officials say.
The government denies any complicity in the militia attacks and says the warring sides are clashing over land and scarce water resources.
Without international assistance, Chadian villagers were the first to help, sharing the little water and food they had with the refugees. But as the months dragged on, the food and water started to run out, and local villagers could no longer cope.
Both refugees and their Chadian hosts - who come from the same African tribes - are also subject to continuous cross-border raids by the Sudanese militias known as the Janjaweed. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has documented at least seven incursions into Chad since early last month.
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How long before the US is told we should not only clean up this mess...well, we're hearing that now...but also take in all the refugees and rebuild Chad and the Sudan into a Garden of Eden.
WE'RE GOING TO TAKE THINGS AWAY FROM YOU
A sporting challenge -- but not too challenging for the French Foreign Legion!
"Officially" is the key word here. So far, no nation in the international community has "officially" acknowledged the truth: Sudan is a bleeding ground of genocide. In this void, the Sudanese government continues to act with brutal impunity.
Secretary Powell went with the Secretary General to view this mess - neither has protested forcefully and publicly.
This is not America's fight however, this is what is being bandied about:...The Bush administration has been far too timid in proposing punitive sanctions only for Janjaweed leaders. That remains the main thrust of a Security Council resolution that Washington is circulating. It would be much more effective to put direct pressure on the leaders of Sudan's government, who can shut down the attacks quickly...
So why doesn't France or Germany take a stand here? No oil For Food Program for them Kofi?
No oil, no help.
Islam.....a religion of Peace!
Powell has called for some sanctions - it is time to quit calling for them - impose them NOW! Write the Secretary:
(write Powell)
Both the oppressors and the refugees are Muslims.
It's just that the refugees are black Muslims, and the oppressors are Arab Muslims.
Which tells me that the real terrorism problem is not Islam.
It is Arabs.
I say we wait until the UN passes 14 resolutions condemming the genocide.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26672
Might want to re-think that.
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