[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Op-Ed Columnist: He Ain't Heavy. . .

Wed Oct 20 09:22:46 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
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Op-Ed Columnist: He Ain't Heavy. . .

October 20, 2004
 By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF 

SARAHA, Sudan - Allow me to introduce Abdelrahim Khamis
Ghani and his little brother, Muhammad. 

The challenge we Americans face in Sudan is this: Are we
willing to save Abdelrahim and Muhammad, and two million
more like them? 

I photographed Abdelrahim and Muhammad in their mostly
abandoned Darfur village, where the murderous Janjaweed
militia, backed by the Sudanese government, has already
killed seven members of their family. The boys have been
hiding for months here in a war zone, hungry and frightened
and hunted like wild beasts. 

"We're afraid here," said the boys' older sister,
17-year-old Asha. "We would go if we could. But we have no
transport, no camel." 

This land stinks of fear and death, but perhaps just as
striking as the murder and rape are the moral choices that
families here are forced to make each day. 

For Abdelrahim's family members, the choice is whether to
let adults and older siblings try to hike to safety in Chad
- it's a six-day walk. They could leave one adult behind to
try to keep Abdelrahim and Muhammad alive. Or should the
whole family stay, putting more people at risk but
increasing the chance that the boys can be saved? 

The family has elected for now to stay here together,
surviving by gathering wild seeds to eat. Apart from
starvation, the danger is that the Janjaweed or Sudanese
troops will return to kill the men and rape and disfigure -
and sometimes kill - the women and girls. 

I sneaked into Darfur in a pickup truck from Chad, roaming
a countryside speckled with burned and abandoned villages.
I don't know how many survivors in Darfur are still hungry
and hunted like these boys, but the number is in the
hundreds of thousands. Here, genocide unfurls in slow
motion. (For the sights and sounds of my trip to Darfur,
click here.) 

One morning I came across a 10-year-old girl herding goats.
She was frightened when she saw my truck, fearing that I
might be in the Janjaweed, which had already burned down
her home and killed 30 members of her extended family. 

After it was clear that I was not a threat, the girl's
father, Hassan Nahar, emerged from behind a tree. He
explained that he had hidden the rest of his family in the
hills, but he uses his youngest daughter to keep the goats
alive. 

"I think it is a bit less likely that the Janjaweed would
kill a young girl like her," he said. "They would kill the
older children." He hid when he saw my truck because there
was no way he could protect his child from men with guns,
and there was not much point in being killed in front of
her. 

Aid workers, who are doing heroic work in Darfur, face
another painful moral calculus. So far, war zones like this
part of Darfur have not gotten any help because it is too
dangerous. Relief groups must protect their own employees,
even if that means allowing Sudanese to die. 

I did see three Save the Children vehicles on an
exploratory mission to see whether the area was safe. Then,
a couple of hours after I saw them, a Save the Children car
in the same area - I can't be sure if it was one of the
same vehicles - hit a mine, and two aid workers were
killed. Now aid groups will be even less willing to venture
here. 

I understand the painful ethical choices of Abdelrahim's
family, of Mr. Hassan and of the international aid
agencies. But what I can't fathom is our own moral choice,
our decision to acquiesce in genocide. 

We in America could save kids like Abdelrahim and Muhammad.
This wouldn't require troops, just a bit of gumption to
declare a no-fly zone, to press our Western allies and
nearby Arab and African states, to impose an arms embargo
and other targeted sanctions, to push a meaningful U.N.
resolution even at the risk of a Chinese veto, and to
insist upon the deployment of a larger African force. 

Instead, President Bush's policy is to chide Sudan and send
aid. That's much better than nothing and has led Sudan to
kill fewer children and to kill more humanely: Sudan now
mostly allows kids in Darfur like Abdelrahim to die of
starvation, instead of heaving them onto bonfires. But
fundamentally, U.S. policy seems to be to "manage" the
genocide rather than to act decisively to stop it. 

The lackadaisical international response has already
permitted the deaths of about 100,000 people in Darfur, and
up to 10,000 more are dying each month. We should look
Abdelrahim and Muhammad in the eye and feel deeply ashamed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/opinion/20kris.html?ex=1099289366&ei=1&en=e6eab2cdc6c79ed1

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