Powell’s Visit to Darfur is Not Enough

The world community sat on its hands and did nothing while a genocide occurred in Rwanda a few years ago. The same thing is happening in the western part of Sudan, in a region known as Darfur. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to a refugee camp there brought some attention to the problem, but without more aid and some real pressure on the Khartoum government (including foreign troops) more will die.

Sudan is a geographical fiction, like most of the post-colonial world. There are black Christians and animists living in the south and west, while the country is run by Muslim Arabs. There is also a clash between Muslim Arab nomads and black Christian farmers. The infamous janjaweed militia (which is not a drug gang despite the name) preys on the black population largely at the connivance and with the blessings of the government in Khartoum.

According to the BBC, the Sudanese Air Force will bomb a village by fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, and then the janajweed ride in, killing the men and raping the women. The village is burned to the ground and as the refugees flee, they are hunted from horseback. The Khartoum government claims it cannot get the militia under control. It seems odd, then, that the Air Force can coordinate so well with the marauders.

Estimates are that 10,000 people a month are dying in Darfur. Rape is being used as a weapon of war, civilians of a given ethnic group are targeted, and the government that is legally and morally responsible for protecting the citizenry is actively engaged in these attacks. This meets any reasonable definition of genocide under international law.

And so what comes next will decide just how serious the world is about not reliving the shame that was Rwanda. It’s time to sent foreign troops to protect the refugee camps and the Darfur villages. The Khartoum government has said it cannot, and therefore, its sovereignty de facto doesn’t extend to Darfur. Or will the world pass by on the other side?


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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