[Mb-civic] A Village Waiting for Rape and Murder By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 12, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
A Village Waiting for Rape and Murder
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

KOLOY, Chad

Politely but insistently, the people in this town explained that they were
about to be massacred.

"The janjaweed militias have already destroyed all the villages east of
Koloy," Adam Omar, a local sheik, explained somberly. "Any moment, they will
attack us here.

This remote market town of thatch-roof mud huts near the Chad-Sudan border
is on the front line of the genocidal fury that Sudan has unleashed on
several black African tribes. After killing several hundred thousand people
in its own Darfur region, Sudan's government is now sending its brutal
janjaweed militias to kill the same tribes here in Chad.

President Bush is showing signs that he may be ready to stand up to the
thugs in Sudan, but China is protecting Sudan, Europe is inert, and the
African Union can't even muster the courage to call for immediate U.N.
peacekeepers. So the people here are probably right to resign themselves to
be slaughtered ‹ if not sooner, then later.

Koloy has no electricity and no phones, so the people could not call for
help. But even if they could, no one could help them. Chad's small army had
sent a few trucks of troops the previous day, but after learning that they
faced more than 500 janjaweed armed with heavy machine guns, the Chadian
soldiers had dashed away again. As I drove into town, the town's police
force was fleeing on horseback.

I visited the "hospital" ‹ an open-sided tent that lacked any medical
personnel but was filled with gunshot victims. Local leaders told me that
the janjaweed were only three miles away and had sent word that they would
attack Koloy that day.

"When they see you, they shoot you," said Adam Zakaria, the sheik of a
nearby village, Gindeiza, that had been attacked the day before. Mr. Adam
had one bullet wound in his foot and another in his thigh.

"I know the man who shot me," Mr. Adam said. "He used to be my friend." That
man, Hussein al-Beheri, is an Arab neighbor. But last year, according to Mr.
Adam's account, Mr. Hussein joined the janjaweed and now regularly attacks
non-Arabs.

"I told him, 'Don't shoot me!' " Mr. Adam recalled. "Three or four times, I
pleaded, 'Don't shoot me.' And then he shot me."

Ten people are known dead in his village, Mr. Adam said, but many others are
missing ‹ and no one has been able to look for dead bodies because the
janjaweed still occupy the village. Among those missing, he said, are his
two wives and four children.

"I have not seen them since yesterday, when they were in the village," he
said. "In my heart, I think they are dead."

This entire area gets no visits from diplomats and no help from the U.N. or
aid groups, because it is too risky. Only one organization, Doctors Without
Borders, sticks it out, sending in a convoy of intrepid doctors three days a
week to pull bullets out of victims.

It was nerve-racking to be in Koloy, and my local interpreter kept insisting
that we rush away. But I've never felt more helpless than the moment I
pulled away in my Toyota Land Cruiser, waving goodbye to people convinced
that they would soon be murdered.

In the end, there was no janjaweed attack that day. Perhaps that's because
the janjaweed have found that it is inconvenient to drive away absolutely
all Africans; now the janjaweed sometimes leave market towns alone so that
their own families can still have places to shop.

The people of Koloy are still waiting to be massacred. Think for a moment
what it would be like to huddle with your family every day, paralyzed by
fear, waiting for the end.

And then remember that all this can be stopped. You can go to
www.millionvoicesfordarfur.org and send a postcard to President Bush,
encouraging him to do more. At www.genocideintervention.net, you can find a
list of "10 things you can do right now."

Maybe it seems that you have no real power to change anything in Koloy, but,
frankly, right now you're the only hope that the people in Koloy have.
€

Bill O'Reilly refused to join me on this trip, passing up the $727,000 that
my readers had pledged to sponsor his trip to Darfur. But Ann Curry of the
"Today" show and a top-notch NBC crew did travel with me on this trip.
Unlike Bill, Ann didn't flinch at traveling in janjaweed-infested areas or
at staying in a primitive $4-a-night "hotel" with no plumbing. (O.K., she
did shudder just a little at the wildlife in the hotel's outhouse.) If you
want to break your heart, watch her reports beginning tomorrow ‹ and ABC and
CBS, where are you?

In the meantime, watch my Op-Ed special report from this trip, "The Genocide
Spreads."

Frank Rich is on a book leave.

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