Genocide in Africa
The names of Hitler, Amin, Stalin, Saddam, Milosevic are analogous with state-sanctioned mass murder. Do you know the name of Sudan’s president?
Omar el-Bashir came to power in Sudan in a military coup detat in 1989, unseating a democratically elected government. Under his authority, the civil war between the Arab North and the mineral-rich South, populated mainly by Christians and animists, intensified. By the time hostilities eased last year, 2 million lives had been lost.
As el-Bashir’s National Islamic Front regime, based in the capital Khartoum, reached its brittle truce with the South, a crisis began to erupt in the western province of Darfur, an area the size of France. Unlike the South, the Darfur region is populated by Muslims. Unlike their Arab co-religionists of the North, Darfuris are black.
Accusations that the Khartoum regime is colluding with the Janjaweed militia, which has conducted a scorched earth policy in Darfur, are persuasive. Khartoum’s objective in backing and supporting the Janjaweed, it seems, is part of a plan to Arabise and Islamise all of Sudan. The militia’s campaign strategy is medieval: to drive the victims off their land by means of murder, rape, and pillage. In modern terms this is called ethnic cleansing.
Warnings from the churches notwithstanding, this went on for more than a year before the international community began to take note just as the world dithered over the genocidal war in Sudan’s South (or indeed the ethnic carnage of 1994 in Rwanda). And even then, instead of taking suitable action, the world proceeded to engage in a semantic deliberation over whether or not the Darfur crisis constitutes a genocide.
And all the while, thousands of people have been massacred, and hundreds of thousands systematically displaced. Attacks have reportedly continued even after September 9, when the United States officially declared the Darfur crisis a genocide (the European Union and African Union are dissenting).
Whatever category of human tragedy one may wish to apply to Darfur, the international community remains reluctant to intervening in Darfur just as it had been in southern Sudan and divided over what form an intervention might take.
This disposition is not so much rooted in Western indifference towards African crises (though the international community could care much more), but rather on self-interest. El-Bashir’s regime not only benefits from ethnic ties with Arab countries, but also from economic ties with European, American and Asian interests. These interests some national, others corporate are tied to Sudan’s oil, which Khartoum takes from the South (without that region benefitting in any way). Indeed, China has made it clear that it would use its veto on the United Nation’s Security Council to block material UN intervention, because it imports oil from Sudan.
The continued presence in Sudan of Western companies — such as Siemens, Alcatel, Daewoo, BP, Shell, Lufthansa, KLM among others — perpetuates the survival of el-Bashir’s regime.
Some European governments favour oil and arms embargoes against Khartoum. This is not enough.
Disinvestment, if necessary by means of legislated sanctions, will be a crucial step to stopping the bleeding in Africa’s largest country.
Importantly, the African Union must gather the political courage and will to force Khartoum to return peace to Sudan. Here the Muslim countries of Africa, especially those of the North, must be persuaded to take a lead.
And finally, let’s hold Omar el-Bashir accountable for presiding over the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of African people.
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