Darfur: Genocide in Plain View

Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2005 by Ruffin, David

SINCE EARLY 2003, an unchecked force of Arab Janjaweed militias and Sudanese government troops has attacked the villages of hundreds of thousands of Black Sudanese in Darfur, a vast region in Western Sudan the size of France. With a brutal efficiency that harkens back to the conquering armies of Nazi Germany, villagers are swept from their homes in a scourge of ethnic cleansing sponsored by the Sudanese government.

At the end of last year, more than 1.7 million Sudanese had been internally displaced and an estimated 70,000 killed, according to Human Rights Watch. About 200,000 additional displaced victims have fled to neighboring Chad.

"Babies are still dying needlessly of malnutrition and preventable disease. Starvation is an everyday occurrence for pockets of people trapped and hidden in Darfur's darkest corners. Insecurity makes them inaccessible; our aid and food programs cannot reach them and they cannot escape." This account by trauma nurse Roberta Gately, who works for the International Rescue Committee, was part of a BBC News report broadcast on Nov. 10, 2004.

According to reports released by the U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watch, the attacks on villages follow a common pattern, beginning with bombing from Sudanese combat aircraft or helicopter gunships. Then, Janjaweed militias riding horses or camels and government troops in vehicles attack with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. The men and boys of the villages are generally dragged from their homes and shot, women are often gang-raped. Livestock is stolen and property looted by the raiders. Then the village is burned to the ground as those trying to escape are bombed and strafed by aircraft. Villages are usually attacked repeatedly to eliminate the possibility of the displaced returning to rebuild.

This bloody campaign has its origins in the Sudanese government's response to February 2003 attacks on a few military installations by Black southern rebel groups - the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement. Exploiting long-held ethnic antagonisms, Sudan president Omar al-Bashir enlisted the assistance of the Janjaweed militias. The Janjaweed are nomadic Arab herdsmen who have preyed on the Black people of southern Sudan as part of a centuries-old slave trade that continues today. Another element of enmity between the Janjaweed and the Black farmers is the fierce competition for arable land, as the encroaching Sahara Desert depletes water resources and grazing land in Darfur.

The vicious raids by Arabs against Black Sudanese are rooted in the trans-Saharan slave trade that goes back 1,300 years and continues today. The legacy of slavery pervades the language and culture of much of Sudan. Arabs in southern Sudan call non-Arab Africans abid or slave, and zurga, which means Black, but is used as a racial slur. The State Department report documents that Janjaweed raiders commonly use racial epithets such as, "Kill the slaves; Kill the slaves!" and "We have orders to kill all the blacks."

Ironically, as a result of more than a millennium of intermingling and intermarriage, the physical and racial differences between the oppressors and the repressed have been erased. The Janjaweed not only share the same dark skin tones as those they kill, they also pray to the same God.

Over the last two years, the counterinsurgency effort has escalated into a full-scale ethnic cleansing campaign waged primarily against civilian populations. Human rights advocates fear that a consequence of a consolidation of the campaign may be that more than a million displaced African Darfurians will remain in refugee camps for decades to come.

The Grim Details of Genocide

The scope of the genocide has been documented by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, the World Health Organization and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). American civil rights, religious and political leaders charge that since its outbreak in 2003, the state-sponsored violence in Darfur has continued in plain view with no one intervening to stop it. Yet pleas from the United Nations to restrain the Sudanese government and for the expansion of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping contingent there have been ineffective.

Activists have urged the United States to intervene more directly than providing aid and the logistical support for peacekeeping troops. They have hoped that, as a signatory of the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the United States would be compelled to act. According to Article 2 of the Convention, genocide is defined as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Their requests have gone unheeded, though, and Western assistance has been limited to humanitarian aid.

Between fiscal year 2003 and January 2005, the United States has committed $373.5 million in USAID funds to address the refugee crisis in Sudan and Chad. More than $200 million of that assistance was passed through the United Nations World Food Program. USAID has funded other non-governmental groups assisting refugees, such as CARE, the International Rescue Committee, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services and the International Medical Corps. These organizations are also providing nutrition as well as potable water, health care, sanitation services, shelter and logistical and transportation support.