corrente

How often in the last ninety years has that been said collectively by humankind? Maybe if it feels like deja vu all over again that's because it keeps on happening.

At the end of the WW2 , there were a lot of "never agains" sworn to. Despite new institutions like the UN, and new treaties like NATO, the world watched impotently as the Hungarian uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks, as colonialism came to a bloody end in Algeria, and Southeast Asia, and the Congo, as Arab countries attacked Israel, and Israel drove Palestinians into refugee camps, and as Idi Amin completed the post-colonial ethnic cleansing of Ugandan citizens of Indian descent; the world community had few answers for the Vietnamese boat people, or the genocide in Cambodia, or China’s cultural revolution, or the death squads in Latin America, or ethnic cleaning in Ethiopia and Somalia, genocidal civil war in the Sudan, proxy wars fought by child soldiers in Angola and Mozambique, the gassing of the Kurds in Iraq, not once, but twice, and in the last decade of the century, we had ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, complete with mass executions and rape camps, Serbian suppression of the most basic human rights of the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo; in Rwanda, an almost classic example of genocide was ignored until too late; North Korea continued to be its own special kind of horror, and now, in the first decade of a new century, we have the Sudan, again, the Darfur province on the border of Chad...the newest challenge to our many oaths of "never again."

We've done better with the nuclear genie than my cold war generation raised on drop drills and nuclear weapons tests in nearby deserts could have imagined, and much less well dealing with those other horrors we thought we'd left behind in the first half of the twentieth century.

We need to think about why. This is an international conversation we need to have. But not now.

Now, all that matters is that the world community acts to prevent the already mainly completed violent ethnic cleansing of black tribal Sudanese Muslims from their villages in Darfu, accompanied by a scorched earth policy that leaves no sign of human habitation, homes and food supplies destroyed, fields left unfit for tilling, does not turn into another of those horror-filled genocides the reality of which we only seem to grasp after it is too late. It is very nearly too late already. But not quite.

I attempted to unthread some of the confusing complexities of the situation in the Sudan in a previous, briefer post here. A decades-long lethal conflict between the Muslim north and the largely Christian south has only recently begun to be resolved, with a north/south peace agreement, brokered, in part, by the Bush administration, working with the UN, and others within the international human rights community.

Darfur is in the west; it's people are Muslim, but they are also ethnically tribal black Africans. The poorest region in the Sudan, marginalized economically by the central government, in recent years, territorial encroachments by marauding militias of nomadic Arab tribesmen proved to be the last straw. The people of Darfur mounted an armed response to the militias and the newly formed Sudanese Liberation Army, in consort with another group known as JEM (Justice & Equality Movement) demanded from Khartoum the end of Darfur's economic isolation, and protection from the increasingly savage raids by Sudanese Arab militias operating out of the north.

Neither negotiating with the rebels, nor engaging with them militarily, the government, instead, encouraged the Arab militias to step up their attacks on the civilian population, and, as we are beginning to be able to verify, it joined in the attacks. Thousands of civilians have been killed. The rest, largely the elderly, women and children have been driven to the border areas between the Sudan and Chad. There they have neither shelter, nor any means to safely dispose of human waste, nor drinkable water, nor food, nor, of course, medicine. And perhaps the final outrage, the government of Sudan denies everything, claims there is no ethnic cleansing, no militias, and has successfully restricted access into Darfur by both the media and humanitarian NGOs seeking to help the refugees.

The most authoritative and up-to-date commentary on the situation I've yet come across was broadcast two weeks ago on Bill Moyers' NOW on PBS. David Branccacio interviewed a British reporter named Julie Flint, who had just returned from an amazingly brave, clandestine trip that took her into the ethnically cleansed portions of Darfur, accompanied by members of the rebel army. What she documents is overwhelming evidence that the government of Sudan is allied with the militias in a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing, and that to cover their tracks, they are committed to a genocidal policy of refusing to allow humanitarian supplies to reach the refugees stranded in these border areas.

BRANCACCIO: You have been covering atrocities, war zones for 30 years. Where do you place Sudan, the current situation in the Darfur region in terms of the things you've seen in your career?

FLINT: It's as bad as anything I've ever seen. There's no doubt about that. I expected it to be bad when I went there, because of the very sporadic, scattered reports we were getting.

Information was still quite thin when I went in. But to my astonishment, I found a land which had no human life. It was completely empty. And that, in a way is as bad, it's a land which is full of blood and war, it was just an empty land. All human life had been removed. And I found that profoundly shocking.

(edit)

[VIDEO WITH VOICE OVER]

BRANCACCIO: In Chad, Julie Flint interviewed scores of refugees. One after one, they testified to the abuses they had witnessed and experienced.

Twelve-year-old Hussein fled with his family from Sudan after 27 of their fellow villagers were killed in Darfur. He reported that when he and some other kids saw soldiers, they hid behind a tree. The soldiers found them. Hussein was shot three times at close range, in the face, then in the arm, and then his leg. He says soldiers killed three of his friends, and wounded six others.

This man is an imam, a Muslim holy man. He confirms that armed gunmen have been swarming to villages and killing imams, destroying mosques, including his own, and burning copies of the Koran.

And who is attacking the black Sudanese Muslims? Arab Sudanese Muslims, allied with the Arab-dominated government. The government has inflicted harsh treatment for years on the blacks of Darfur, whom it considers inferior.

Last year, some — calling themselves the Sudanese Liberation Army — responded with a rag-tag rebellion, government forces attacked ruthlessly, and the attacks continues to this day. They are accompanied by fearsome allies: an armed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed has been terrorizing villages: swooping in like a murderous, medieval warrior horde.
[END VIDEO]


BRANCACCIO: The Janjaweed, these are Arab raiders, often on horseback, sometimes on camel who are...

FLINT: I wouldn't call them raiders anymore.

BRANCACCIO: What would you call them?

FLINT: Well, the word, "Janjaweed," has been used for a long time. And basically, it referred to a sort of a motley bunch of different groups, camel herders, encroaching on the farming lands of settled, African tribes.

And it was largely economic conflict.

But in the last few years, the Islamist government have harnessed these militias, who they know have pre-existing disputes with the settled, African farmers, and have used them, especially since the rebellion began, as counter insurgency militias. And what I found of which I'm absolutely certain is that the vast majority of these lethal attacks are done by government forces, and the so called Janjaweed forces, working together. These are no longer hit and run attacks by Arab nomads. They're systematic attacks by the government and the militia, often with air support.

BRANCACCIO: So, you saw evidence, and from your interviews, that the government of the Sudan is working in concert with these Janjaweed?

FLINT: Yes. That was the most striking thing. I interviewed scores and scores of people, civilians, as well as rebels of course, and documented 14 instances of large scale killings in a six month period. Those weren't the only instances of large scale killings. But they were the only ones I corroborated in the time I had.

BRANCACCIO: How many people

FLINT: Almost 800 people died that I know of. There will be more. And in all but two of those instances, the Janjaweed and the government attacked together.

And the civilians said, "They're partners now." And I said to the chief of one village, the headman, "Why do you say they're partners?" And he said, he looked surprised that I even asked. And said, "They arrived together. They fight together. And they leave together."

(edit)

BRANCACCIO: If you take a look at more of your film here, we have what are we looking at?

FLINT: You're looking at rebels of the Sudan Liberation. The vast majority of the rebels I met were people who had been burned out of their homes. Men of 30, 40 even 50, plus members of the Sudan Army and police. For example, I met a lovely man, an African, who had been in the Sudanese Army for 22 years. He'd stayed in the Army despite the fact that his Arab colleagues were promoted, got pay raises. He didn't. He stayed as a bog standard soldier, while the Arabs were promoted.

But when the Army came, burned his village, killed a number of people including his brother, he left, and he joined the rebels. Similarly, I found policemen in the same situation. My translator was a lawyer, who had lived in Khartoum, who lost nine members of his family, dead and wounded when the government bombed the town. I met a doctor, whose clinic had been burnt by the government. It was an interesting group of people.

BRANCACCIO: And these members of the Sudan Liberation Army served as your entree into this area?

FLINT: They did. I had no other way to get in. And also, because civilians often know a very small part of the overall picture, and because many civilians would go and meet the commander of the SLA simply to tell him what had been happening in his area, because past possibly, their sons, their relatives would... having been burnt out, were now in the Army. He had a good, overall picture. The rebels had a good, overall picture.

I then verified that picture by going without armed men, to speak to the civilians in Chad. But the civilians in Chad could give me very small pictures. I wanted to try to get the big picture, which I'm sure I got. I have no doubt.

BRANCACCIO: One term being used here is ethnic cleansing. From what you've seen, is that accurate?

FLINT: Oh, definitely. The countryside is empty. There's nobody there. It has been ethnically cleansed.

There’s lots more. I urge anyone who reads this to read the Flint material at NOW. You can find out about Flint with links to video and other of her materialshere, and the transcript of the NOW interview here, scroll down to just about the half way point.

Except for a very few journalists, among whom Nicholas Kristoff deserves credit and gratitude for his insistent reporting from and about Darfur, governments and media around the world have ignored what was happening there; the institutions that have been in the forefront of raising the alarm have been the humanitarian and human rights NGOs, and those same agencies within the UN. Some of the silence about Darfur was due to the fear that focusing efforts there would derail the north/south peace accords. The Bush administration deserves credit for having engaged diplomatically in the Sudan. Secretary Powell is there now. Thus far, however, the administration has refused to called what is happening there "genocide." Some critics have faulted them for that. Personally, I think such criticism regarding labels is likely to be a fairly fruitless path. This is one of the few foreign policy issues, maybe the only one, around which Democrats and Republicans can close ranks. I think we ought to try and do that, although I’m well aware the favor will not be returned.

MoveOn.org has taken note of Darfur and is asking members to call their Senators and Representatives to ask that they lobby the administration to declare the Sudan is engaged in genocide; they also have an online petition to be signed. Take a moment to check it out.

We know from much analysis of what happened in Rwanda a decade ago that it wouldn't have taken that much to stop the genocide in its tracks; a minor military presence, and most of all, an insistent, world-wide gaze trained on what was happening there. Instead, every country pulled out their nationals, including this country, and even the UN looked the other way. The Sudanese government hasn't even pretended to be telling the truth. The leaders in Khartoum know the world is leery of upsetting the peace accords, and they’ve noticed that the world is not noticing. When people around the world insist that their governments start noticing, when people and governments around the world make clear to the Sudanese government that we're watching what they’re doing, that we will remember, by name, who does what to whom and that crimes against humanity will be prosecuted, at that point and that point only, will the dynamic of genocide begin to be thwarted. It is not hopeless, it is not undoable, we have only to marshal the will to start paying attention. A weblog whose sole purpose is to help you do that is called "Sudan, The Passion of the Present," and you can find it here.