I decided to share this because I think too many of us go either uninformed or unaffected by the current Genocide in Darfur-- I know I was, up until I wrote this. I think there's a basic knowledge all of us share about the crisis, which is largely due to the media's influence on our own culture, but still, I wrote a brief essay (below) on how the genocide came to be and what it means five years later after attending a discussion with Ann Bartlett, a USF professor and Darfur activist. It's important for us to recognize that this is
huge; that it is wiping out hundreds of thousands of Africans and that, in actuality, is something we have the power to stop.
In The Sudan Tribune, researcher and analyst Eric Reeves discusses the history and sick mastermind behind the ongoing genocide in Darfur; an issue so disturbing in the human condition and deeply intertwined with the Sudanese government that for five years, this mass murder movement has taken on unprecedented records. Reeves' 2005 article "Genocide in Darfur: How the Horror Began" intricately maps out the causes leading up to the issue, its continuing Islamic influence, U.S.'s "involvement" or lack thereof, and the unbearable consequences villages and Humanitarian Aid Organizations face to this day in the country. According to Reeves, as of now, "the genocide in Darfur will continue. We can stop it. We are simply choosing not to."
Before Reeves' argument is addressed, I think it is necessary to define what the term "genocide" means. According to The United Nation Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide circa 1951, "genocide" is legally defined as: "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births; and forcibly transferring children of the group to other groups." In 2003, the first 21st century genocide rampage began unnoticed in Darfur. 350,000 to 400,000 people were killed during a span of 29 months by means of violence, malnutrition, and disease (Reeves). Non-Arabs and African villages are violently targeted by raiding Arab militia groups, and the National Islamic Front regime in Khartourm, Sudan has repeatedly neglected efforts to control these attacks (similar to that of the Italian Occupation of Algeria, where the U.N. clearly failed to intervene.) There has been an ongoing struggle between Arabs and African villages due to the scarcity of certain resources, but it was the government's lack of interference and representation that ultimately gave way to the conflict. We have to understand that this is an extremely violent, yet extremely overlooked crisis: non-Arab Africans are being brutally tortured, raped, starved of resources and education, and forced into refugee camps, far from their villages. Africans are dying at exponential rates, and the rest of the world is silently watching.
Director of the Darfur Centre for Human Rights and Development Ann Bartlett had an interesting take on Humanitarian Aid Organizations and their affect on the current situation in Sudan. Many refugee camps in Darfur were originally created by these aid organizations as safety zones for villages, however, these small and overcrowded residencies have served as a floodgate for recent attacks on both the workers and the people living there. Bartlett said that humanitarians with money do weird things to local cities. Not only do they increase the risk of attack, but they also increase rent and market food prices, therefore forcing Darfur locals and refugee campers out, and leaving them more vulnerable to torture and disease. More attacks on the workers themselves are becoming frequent and from January to October 2008, 11 individuals involved with the U.N. Humanitarian Aid were reportedly killed, 170 abducted, and several still remain missing. Bartlett stressed that within the past five years alone there has been a significant increase in guerilla rebellions, government bombings, and sexual violence and nothing is being done. It was because of the cycles of authoritarianism (the elite dominated Sudanese government), political and economical marginalization (by their own government), denied political representation, militarization with the influx of arms into the region, as well as the strong Arab "belt" of mobilized groups like the "Janjaweed" which, she said, have all given birth to the rage. And the situation remains unchanged. 2004 was coined Darfur's darkest days in the genocide, and now, four years later, the Arab militia continues to strike. The Sudanese government has even gone so far as to paint their planes white, acting like aid planes to drop bombs on innocent bystanders. The current peace agreement in South Darfur is not holding, and relationships built both locally and internationally are breaking due to the lack of ground security in the region.
"Deaths from malnutrition and disease are no less the product of genocidal ambitions than violent killings: Having so comprehensively and deliberately destroyed the villages and livelihoods of the African tribal populations of Darfur, Khartoum and its Janjaweed allies bear full responsibility for the ongoing deadly consequences of these assaults on civilian targets" (Reeves).
The Sudanese government is also said to have history with harboring terrorist organizations and radical Islamic groups. Bartlett and other Darfur researchers alike say the government openly sheltered terrorist Osama Bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, and is the only sub-Saharan country on the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. The reason the genocide went so unnoticed in the beginning was because of the War in Iraq-- the Bush administration claimed it was assisting Darfur, but secretly was paying off the Sudanese government in order to track Bin Laden. No protection or aid was offered to the Africans. According to Army Special Forces Officer, John Fenzel, "genocide does not happen in anarchy or chaos, it requires political organization. Stopping genocide can usually only be accomplished with the application of external force." Fenzel went on to say that the only external forces currently deployed to deal with Darfur are: the African Union Mission in Sudan, AMIS, which he says is not sufficient enough. Four organizations that have the capability to begin to tackle the crisis include: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, strong enough in peacekeeping operations, but unwilling to provide troops in Darfur; The European Union, EU, also unwilling to provide troops, but capable of supplying quick reaction force within 60 days of notification (Fenzel); The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, which requires Sudan's approval to create an affective force, but lacks any peace-building experience; and The African Union, AU, who sponsors the AMIS, but, like the others, has been unwilling to provide troops for means other than self-defense. Fenzel said that though some of these organizations are providing financial support to the AMIS, they only have about 4,000 troops to cover a region with a population of 6 million. Other countries could also get more involved, like France, who has troops at the Chad-Sudan border but focuses solely on Chad, while the UK and U.S. are unwilling to provide troops (at least under Bush).
The future for Darfur seems meek-- after all, how do we stop the process after these people have experienced this for so long? The Sudanese government intends to wipe out their people and guerilla members will continue to pick up arms after their mothers have been raped, point the AK-47 and say: "you're the problem." Most educated political leaders have fled the region, and the victims as well as the militia groups remain uneducated. So, what can we do? Bartlett says we're dealing with nothing but chaos, yet if we start by bettering our communication systems with not only their hierarchical government, but our nation because the media coverage regarding Darfur is largely altered and misunderstood. She also advises U.S. citizens to take action and write to Obama and Biden about the issue. Reeves says it best:
"It is important that the stark moral choice confronting the international community be absolutely clear. History must not record this moment as one in which our decision was uninformed by either the scale of the human catastrophe or an understanding of what is required to stop genocidal destruction. And so, despite the long odds against an intervention actually taking place, it is our obligation to say with conviction and understanding the most urgent truth: In the absence of humanitarian intervention, Darfur’s civilian population, as well as humanitarian workers, will be consigned to pervasive, deadly insecurity; displaced persons will remain trapped in camps that are hotbeds of disease; agricultural production will remain at a standstill, leaving millions of people dependent on international food assistance for the foreseeable future; aid workers will continue to fall prey to targeted and opportunistic violence" (Reeves).
