Only outsiders can halt genocide in Sudan
Only outsiders can halt genocide in Sudan
Only outsiders can halt genocide in Sudan
The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, June 9:
In 1994, Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of the U.N. peacekeeping troops in Rwanda, warned his U.N. superiors that a genocide was about to occur and begged for more troops to stop it. He was ignored. And 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus in a matter of days.
Never again, the civilized world has said since the Holocaust, but we don't mean it, not really. Speaking recently on National Public Radio about the near-genocidal situation now in Darfur, a western province of Sudan, Gen. Dallaire mused bleakly that if African gorillas were threatened with extinction, the world would be more concerned than it is about the potential deaths of a million human beings.
What's causing this crisis? The Sudanese government and the death-squad militias it supports in Darfur.
The government and the death squads are Arab Muslims. Their victims are also Muslims, but are black, and seen as racially inferior by their persecutors, who are trying to kill them or drive them off the land so Arabs can seize it - exactly as the government has been doing to black Christians and animists in the country's southern provinces.
That blood-soaked conflict appears close to resolution thanks to aggressive Western diplomacy - the same sort of strategy that must be deployed for Darfur's sake now. The U.N. Security Council should pass a resolution calling for full humanitarian access to Darfur, which the Sudanese government has so far denied, and put together a peacekeeping force to restore order and secure food and medical assistance to the refugees.
The United States may not be able to spare troops for this mission, but surely European nations sitting out the Iraq conflict would be willing to send their soldiers in for this mission of mercy. They should be asked.
Arab countries, too, should be asked to help - unless it's the case that they don't mind seeing Muslims kill and displace fellow Muslims, as long as the victims are black. Where are African-American leaders? They should lift up their voices against this racial genocide in the making. Indeed, all of us who shook our heads over Rwanda a decade ago, and said "Never again," must understand that now is the time to make good on our word.
Only outsiders can halt genocide in Sudan
The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, June 9:
In 1994, Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of the U.N. peacekeeping troops in Rwanda, warned his U.N. superiors that a genocide was about to occur and begged for more troops to stop it. He was ignored. And 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus in a matter of days.
Never again, the civilized world has said since the Holocaust, but we don't mean it, not really. Speaking recently on National Public Radio about the near-genocidal situation now in Darfur, a western province of Sudan, Gen. Dallaire mused bleakly that if African gorillas were threatened with extinction, the world would be more concerned than it is about the potential deaths of a million human beings.
What's causing this crisis? The Sudanese government and the death-squad militias it supports in Darfur.
The government and the death squads are Arab Muslims. Their victims are also Muslims, but are black, and seen as racially inferior by their persecutors, who are trying to kill them or drive them off the land so Arabs can seize it - exactly as the government has been doing to black Christians and animists in the country's southern provinces.
That blood-soaked conflict appears close to resolution thanks to aggressive Western diplomacy - the same sort of strategy that must be deployed for Darfur's sake now. The U.N. Security Council should pass a resolution calling for full humanitarian access to Darfur, which the Sudanese government has so far denied, and put together a peacekeeping force to restore order and secure food and medical assistance to the refugees.
The United States may not be able to spare troops for this mission, but surely European nations sitting out the Iraq conflict would be willing to send their soldiers in for this mission of mercy. They should be asked.
Arab countries, too, should be asked to help - unless it's the case that they don't mind seeing Muslims kill and displace fellow Muslims, as long as the victims are black. Where are African-American leaders? They should lift up their voices against this racial genocide in the making. Indeed, all of us who shook our heads over Rwanda a decade ago, and said "Never again," must understand that now is the time to make good on our word.
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