Genocide in Darfur

The world cried out against the genocide in Rwanda and the atrocities in Srebrenica, Bosnia and vowed “never again.” 

In 1983, a civil war by the Muslim Khartoum government of Sudan against the predominately Christian population of southern Sudan raged for twenty years before attempts at negotiating a peace treaty were attempted.  In 2003 rebels, seeking a share of Sudan’s new oil wealth, attacked government facilities in Darfur, the most western region of Sudan.  In response, the Sudanese government began bombing the area and arming a proxy militia, called the Janjaweed, with instructions to attack the rebels and black civilian farmers.

By April, a stampede of brutality, including mass murder and rape, created a stream of refugees into neighboring Chad.  The horror of the Janjaweed atrocities, supported by the Khartoum government, continued unabated through 2007.  Over the four years a conservative estimate of at least 200,000 people have been killed, untold numbers have suffered multiple rapes and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes most ending in refugee camps in Chad.  In 2008, the Janjaweed continue their brutality.

The negotiations to end the civil war in the south were successfully concluded in January 2005.  Concurrently, the United Nations, responding to charges of genocide, in its wisdom concluded:

“Generally speaking the policy of attacking, killing and forcibly displacing members of some tribes does not evince a specific intent to annihilate, in whole or in part, a group distinguished on racial, ethnic national or religious grounds.  Rather, it would seem that those who planned and organized attacks on villages pursued the intent to drive the victims from their homes, primarily for purposes of counter-insurgency warfare.”

I’m sure that the victims of the Janjaweed were relieved by the reassurance of the United Nations.     

Resolution after resolution flowed from the United Nations Security Council, but none of any significance.  All attempts to create a material force capable of stopping the carnage were vetoed outright by China or altered by China to give Sudan rights to control the make-up and field operation of any force sent by the United Nations to Darfur.  The reader may question the protective actions of China.  Once again the answer is oil.  China has exclusive rights under contract with the Sudanese government for all the oil that Sudan chooses to sell.  The industrial expansion program that China initiated some years ago is dependent on an adequate supply of oil, something that Sudan can provide.  Sudan, in exchange, receives blanket protection in the United Nations from China and whatever military equipment it requires.

In 2007, not satisfied with its successes in Darfur, the Janjaweed initiated cross-border raids into eastern Chad killing hundreds more and displacing thousands of the already displaced refugees. 

The killing continues in Darfur and the discussion and debating continue in the United Nations.

June 2008