[Mb-civic] Nicholas Kristoff

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112705C.shtml

A Tolerable Genocide
    By Nicholas D. Kristof
    The New York Times

    Sunday 27 November 2005

    Nyala, Sudan - Who would have thought that a
genocide could become worse? But after two years
of heartbreaking slaughter, rape and mayhem, the
situation in Darfur is now spiraling downward.

    More villages are again being attacked and
burned - over the last week thatch-roof huts have
been burning near the town of Gereida and far to
the northwest near Jebel Mun.

    Aid workers have been stripped, beaten and
robbed. A few more attacks on aid workers, and
agencies may pull out - leaving the hapless
people of Darfur with no buffer between
themselves and the butchers.

    The international community has delegated
security to the African Union, but its 7,000
troops can't even defend themselves, let alone
protect civilians. One group of 18 peacekeepers
was kidnapped last month, and then 20 soldiers
sent to rescue them were kidnapped as well; four
other soldiers and two contractors were killed in
a separate incident.

    What will happen if the situation continues
to deteriorate sharply and aid groups pull out?
The U.N. has estimated that the death toll could
then rise to 100,000 a month.

    The turmoil has also infected neighboring
Chad, which is inhabited by some of the same
tribes as Sudan. Diplomats and U.N. officials are
increasingly worried that Chad could tumble back
into its own horrific civil war as well.

    This downward spiral has happened because for
more than two years, the international community
has treated this as a tolerable genocide. In my
next column, my last from Darfur, I'll outline
the steps we need to take. But the essential
starting point is outrage: a recognition that
countering genocide must be a global priority.

    It's true that a few hundred thousand deaths
in Darfur - a good guess of the toll so far -
might not amount to much in a world where two
million a year die of malaria. But there is
something special about genocide. When humans
deliberately wipe out others because of their
tribe or skin color, when babies succumb not to
diarrhea but to bayonets and bonfires, that is
not just one more tragedy. It is a monstrosity
that demands a response from other humans. We
demean our own humanity, and that of the victims,
when we avert our eyes.

    Already, large swaths of Darfur are so unsafe
that they are "no go" areas for humanitarian
organizations - meaning that we don't know what
horrors are occurring in those areas. But we have
some clues.

    There are widespread reports that the
janjaweed, the government-backed Arab marauders
who have been slaughtering members of several
African tribes, sometimes find it convenient not
to kill or expel every last African but to leave
a few alive to grow vegetables and run markets.
So they let some live in exchange for protection
money or slave labor.

    One Western aid worker in Darfur told me that
she had visited an area controlled by janjaweed.
In public, everyone insisted - meekly and
fearfully - that everything was fine.

    Then she spoke privately to two sisters, both
of the Fur tribe. They said that the local Fur
were being enslaved by the janjaweed, forced to
work in the fields and even to pay protection
money every month just to be allowed to live. The
two sisters said that they were forced to cook
for the janjaweed troops and to accept being
raped by them.

    Finally, they said, their terrified father
had summoned the courage to beg the janjaweed
commander to let his daughters go. That's when
the commander beheaded the father in front of his
daughters.

    "They told me they just wanted to die," the
aid worker remembered in frustration. "They're
living like slaves, in complete and utter fear.
And we can't do anything about it."

    That aid worker has found her own voice, by
starting a blog called "Sleepless in Sudan" in
which she describes what she sees around her. It
sears at http://sleeplessinsudan.blogspot.com,
without the self-censorship that aid groups
routinely accept as the price for being permitted
to save lives in Darfur.

    Our leaders still haven't found their voices,
though. Congress has even facilitated the
genocide by lately cutting all funds for the
African Union peacekeepers in Darfur; we urgently
need to persuade Congress to restore that money.

    So what will it take? Will President Bush and
other leaders discover some backbone if the
killing spreads to Chad and the death toll
reaches 500,000? One million? God forbid, two
million?

    How much genocide is too much?