Sunday, April 2, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.
There is genocide in Africa. So what?
For as long as most of us can remember, there have always been stories of tribal warfare on the African continent, and for as long as I can remember, the rest of the world has been content to have dinner and go to bed, believing - or trying to believe - that there is nothing we could or should do to stop it. And that includes all of us in the United States.
It is easier that way, you know, to tell ourselves that killing - over there - is OK. That way we don't have to do much about it. Or do anything.
I am afraid that is no longer possible because now we know. Remember Rwanda? It took a movie with the brilliant acting of Don Cheadle to shock most of us into the real world in which people are butchered and killed, in many cases just for the sport of it. Sure, there are some tribal issues, maybe even some religious ones, that are used to try to justify the slaughter. But, in the end, people die by the tens and hundreds of thousands just because of who or what they are. Not what they have done.
Thanks to the Save Darfur Coalition (savedarfur.org), which cares about the evil that people do to other people, Las Vegans had the opportunity this past week to see firsthand the latest genocide taking place on Earth. There were about 80 people who came to the Regal Cinemas in Green Valley to listen to a former Marine captain, Brian Steidle, as he told us of his experience in the Darfur region of the Sudan.
It takes courageous and responsible people to tell the kind of stories most decent people don't want to hear. Brian and his colleagues are those kinds of people because they have witnessed extreme injustice, murder, mayhem, rape, torture and the most bloodthirsty of actions by one human being against another, and they have set about on a journey to tell the world.
The Sudan is the largest country in Africa. It has oil riches in the south, which is inhabited mostly by black African Christians, and not very much in the north, which is inhabited by Arab Muslims. The north controls the reins of power, which means the army. And in Africa, the fellow who owns the guns and the power, usually owns his immediate world.
Almost a quarter century ago, the Muslim north set about murdering the Christian south in an effort to take control of the - here's a common theme - oil. Finally, about three years ago, the rest of the world stepped in. Most notably, the Christian world stepped up and into the fray and arranged a cease-fire agreement which, so far, is holding. That is exactly what they should have done.
I remember not too many years ago when the Christian minority population in Lebanon was being systematically destroyed by the majority Muslims. The world was oddly silent. It was the Jewish state of Israel that came to the rescue and saved tens of thousands of Christian Arabs from destruction. Of course, Israel took plenty of heat - a lot of it from "Christian" nations that abhorred the bloodshed - but it managed to save an entire population from annihilation.
The world learned its lesson and acted, albeit slowly, when the same thing started in Sudan. The world, however, has been silent when it comes to Darfur.
You see, Darfur is a little different story. It is entirely Muslim. That's right, Muslims are raping, castrating, killing and destroying entire villages of other Muslims in Darfur. There is a genocide going on in which hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered and millions have been burned out of their homes, left to die of starvation and whatever else destroys helpless people on the run with no safe place to go.
And the reason one group of Muslims is committing these atrocities against another group of Muslims is the same reason why one group of Americans used to murder another group of Americans. Skin color.
The Sudanese government will tell you this is just some tribal warfare getting sorted out. But Brian's pictures and his firsthand accounts of what he has seen, heard and lived tell us an entirely different story. This is the systematic de-Africanization of the Sudan so that one day that country, with all of its riches and its strategic importance in the heart of Africa, will be an African-free Muslim country.
And it is allowed to happen - day after day, night after night of rapes and murders - because the world is either preoccupied or just doesn't care.
This is not a new story. Nazi Germany exterminated 6 million Jews because the rest of the world didn't much care, didn't want to believe or didn't want to risk its own comfortable surroundings to do anything about it. That's how genocides succeed. No decent person rises up to say "no more" or "never again."
Well, we don't have that luxury because we have seen the evidence. In fact, I am publishing one picture Brian took of a small child, Mihad, who was shot in the back. The other pictures of rape, torture, castration and murder are far too gruesome to publish on a Sunday morning.
But, you get the picture.
And now you know the story, too. The question will be what are we going to do about it. Turn our backs? Pretend it isn't happening? Say it isn't our problem? That's how genocides succeed and, as they do, more will happen. And, soon enough, it will be our turn.
So, here's an easy action to take. Write and call the White House, your senators, your congressmen and whomever else you can think of and tell them you are an American, a constituent and a person who cares about what is happening in Darfur. And you want them to not only care with you but also to do something about it. And tell them that they have to do more than just talk. They have been talking for years and doing nothing. This case is living proof that the world is actually talking these people to death.
Now is the time to act, and only if the United States takes a leading role will anything be done.
Or, you can do nothing. After all, these people are not Christian and they are black. Precisely the response that the Darfurian Muslims are counting on from the civilized world.
archive
