Help! Ethnic Cleansing and Starvation Persist in Africa

For years now, Arab militiamen have slowly starved and repeatedly raped the African women of Darfur as part of their cruel and inhumane campaign of ethnic cleansing

More than a year ago, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the systematic raping, pillaging, and killing of black Africans in Sudan’s Darfur region constituted genocide. Indeed, since 2003, these targeted crimes against humanity have resulted in the death of over 300,000 and the displacement of over two million Sudanese.

Although Powell didn’t use the term, I published this article several months later in which I described these genocidal acts as ethnic cleansing. After all, they were (and are) being perpetrated by Arab militiamen known as the Janjaweed (bandits) who were (and are) backed by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government. (Not unlike the 1990s ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs, backed by the Milosevic government of Serbia, that so outraged European and American leaders it compelled them to intervene militarily.)

According to an Economist report on Darfur: “To swell the militia’s ranks, [the Sudanese government] released Arab criminals from jail and gave them horses, $100 each and carte blanche to loot.”

And, given the failure of the Sudanese government to rein in the Janjaweed, despite repeated promises to do so, yesterday’s announcement of new talks offers little hope. These talks aim to resolve differences over land, mineral, and water rights. In fact, just weeks ago, Special UN advisor on preventing genocide Juan Mendez said the government in Khartoum had done little to disarm militias or end the “culture of impunity” in Darfur.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding mounting death tolls in Darfur that make the number of those who were massacred in Bosnia pale by comparison, European and American leaders have done little more than express moral indignation and allocate guilt-assuaging funds to deal with the problem. Even though it’s been abundantly clear for years that these funds have had virtually no salutary impact on the genocidal plight of black Africans in this region of Africa.

Unfortunately, news coverage of the Natalee Holloway saga over the summer and of hurricanes throughout the fall seems to have precluded coverage of the situation in Darfur. This, despite the fact that experienced aid workers now say what’s going on there is the worst humanitarian crisis in history. And, given my previous articles on the humanitarian crises in Niger and the DR Congo, this is a truly alarming assessment.

Alas, I can only reiterate my plea to the readers of this weblog to do whatever is possible to challenge world leaders (including Obasanjo of Nigeria and Mbeki of South Africa) to organize an international coalition of the willing to intervene to stop this ethnic cleansing in Africa. Just as the international community intervened to stop similar atrocities in Europe just years ago.

Note: iPINIONS fully appreciates the compassion fatigue and feelings of inefficacy that greet yet more pleas to alleviate suffering in Africa. Nonetheless, our shared humanity demands our vigilance and we are not powerless to help these oppressed victims!

Because, although there’s nothing world leaders can do about the pestilences of drought and locusts that plague this continent (except help Africans be better prepared to weather them), they have demonstrated they are quite capable of dealing with the pestilence of ethnic cleansing.

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