Entire countries are struggling
for survival. Does the world want to help? Is it too late? Has God cursed
the continent?
by Cecil E. Maranville
We have
written before about the crisis of western Sudan, where armed militia known
as "Janjaweed" (literally, "devils on horseback") raped, murdered and pillaged
the people of Darfur. The horror and death continues with no end in sight.
Sudan's government at first
denied anything was happening. Then it denied that it licensed or abetted
the Janjaweed. Fearing international sanctions imposed by the United Nations,
Khartoum (the seat of Sudan's government) finally allowed humanitarian organizations
to enter the country to begin to care for the IDPs (internally displaced persons).
And Sudan's leaders managed to get the Janjaweed to ratchet down the attacks
over which they supposedly "had no control."
U.S. President George W. Bush
and then Secretary of State Colin Powell correctly called what was happening
a "genocide." But the UN refused to characterize it as such, which would require
economic sanctions on the fragile Sudanese economy. The United States subsequently
backed off from that language, perhaps because Khartoum has cooperated in
the war on terror, providing the CIA with intelligence about terrorists in
Muslim countries.
But they are still dying in
Darfur. And it's not been easy even to count the victims. The survivors have
been hesitant to talk, but the story of the inhumanity is becoming clear.
Marc Lacey of The New York
Times paints a gruesome picture:
"Darfur's dead have been tossed into the bottoms of wells, dumped into mass
graves, interred in sandy cemeteries and crudely cremated. Children have been
snatched from the arms of their mothers and thrown into fires, villagers dragged
on the ground behind horses and camels by ropes strung around their necks"
("The Mournful Math of Darfur: The Dead Don't Add Up," May 19, 2005).
Another New York Times
writer, Nicholas Kristof, tells of nine young boys
the Janjaweed captured, stripped and horribly mutilated, before shooting them
and throwing them into the village well as a warning to others to get out
(cited by Nat Hentoff, "Darfur: How Many More Will Have to Die?" Jewish
World Review, June 20, 2005).
