Joy in Sudan
Yes, that's what the headline says: "Joy in Sudan as deal signed with rebels". Surely what the headline should have iterated and reiterated should have been: "Genocide in Sudan ongoing". For this is not the first "deal" or "understanding" that has been signed, and despite onlookers' hopes for a cessation of the mass murder, rape and displacement, the horror has continued.This is Muslim-upon-Muslim murder on a mass scale. It is also Arab tribespeople against Black Sudanese farmers. It is also the Arab-dominated Sudanese government giving silent assent and even arming the Janjaweed to clear out the black Muslim farmers. It is a land grab. It is a genocide. It has resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocents. It has meant that many more thousands of women have been raped, and women and children have been displaced from their homeland, their communities, their farms.
Here the question looms large: Why is the world at large so vociferous about the horror of the situation; that is the world outside that dominated by Islam? Why are all of the Muslim countries of the world not involved to assist their fellow Muslims? Why has the ongoing atrocities not compelled a united response from the Muslim community at large, condemning outright the deadly manoeuvering of the Sudanese government?
The agreement just "signed" is considered to be "an opportunity for peace". Merely an opportunity. Will this result in concrete steps to end, once and for all, the Sudanese government's neglect of its Black Muslim population, and its blatant encouragement of Arab tribal solutions resulting in genocide? Although the Arab League ostensibly supported the peace deal along with the African Union, the U.S., Canada, Britain and the European Union, a deal that calls unequivocally for a ceasefire, disarmament of militias, and the integration of rebel fighters into Sudan's military, along with a protection force dedicated to the protection of sudanese civilians, why has the Muslim world in general been silent for so long? Why has it taken the outrage expressed by the Western world to bring about an attempt at cessation?
Here's an irony...it has taken dedicated lobbying by a Holocaust Survivor, a Jew, to bring the situation to the world's attention, back in 2004. Elie Wiesel galvanized the Jewish population in North America to form the Save Darfur Coalition, now comprised of more than 100 religious, human rights and humanitarian groups. None other than Osama bin Laden has characterized this kind of humanitarian concern as a ploy for "crusader plunderers" to reap a harvest of oil benefits in Western Sudan. He has exhorted his fellow Islamists to "prepare for a war" against those Western interlopers whose intention is to save Muslim lives.
President George Bush has latterly expressed his position and that of his country for the support of the success of the peace deal, describing the humanitarian crisis that has taken place in Sudan as the genocidal warfare that it truly is. About time, George, following in the estimable footsteps of another George - Clooney, that is, whose recently-reported dedication to the resolution of the crisis has been commendably effective.
The U.S. Congress passed a resolution in 2004 declaring the conflict in Darfur as genocidal. Canada has supported the African Union Mission materially, in Sudan, supplying a number of advisers and technical experts in Darfur. Too little, much too late, for far too many lives which have been brutally extinguished.
This has been going on for years. It is truly a genocide in slow motion. The world wrings its helpless hands in despair. Surely we can do better!
posted by Pieface @ Monday, May 08, 2006
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