New York Times: June 7, 2005
Uncover Your Eyes
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Labado, Sudan
Last fall President Bush declared the slaughter here in Darfur to be
genocide, and then looked away. One reason for his paralysis is apparently
the fear that Darfur may be another black hole of murder and mutilation, a
hopeless quagmire to suck in well-meaning Americans – another Somalia or
Iraq.
It’s not.
We’re again making the same mistake we’ve made in past genocides: as in the
slaughter of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans and Bosnians, we see no
perfect solutions, so we end up doing very little. Because we could not
change Nazi policies, we did not bother to bomb rail lines leading to death
camps; today, because we have little leverage over Sudan, we do not impose a
no-fly zone to stop the strafing of civilians or even bother to speak out
forcefully.
Yet this town of Labado underscores that Darfur is not hopeless, that even
the very modest actions that the international community has taken so far
have saved vast numbers of lives.
A desert town that used to hold about 25,000 people, Labado was attacked in
December by the Sudanese military and the militia known as the janjaweed.
For several days, the army burned huts, looted shops, killed men and raped
women.
For months, Labado was completely deserted and appeared destined to become a
ghost town. But then African Union forces, soldiers from across Africa who
have been dispatched to stop the slaughter, set up a small security outpost
of 50 troops here. Almost immediately, refugees began returning to Labado,
followed by international aid groups.
Today there are perhaps 5,000 people living in the town again, building new
thatch roofs over their scorched mud huts. The revival of Labado underscores
how little it takes to make a huge difference on the ground. If Western
governments help the African Union establish security, if we lean hard on
both the government and the rebels to reach a peace agreement, then by the
end of this year Darfur might see peace breaking out.
For now, Labado is only an oasis, and when the people here step out of the
town they risk being murdered or raped by the janjaweed militia.
Refugees fleeing to Kalma from a village called Saleya described how nine
boys were seized by the janjaweed, stripped naked and tied up, their noses
and ears cut off and their eyes gouged out. They were then shot dead and
left near a public well. Nearby villagers got the message and fled.
Aid workers report that in another village, the janjaweed recently castrated
a 10-year-old boy, apparently to terrorize local people and drive them away.
The boy survived and is being treated.
Yet along with atrocities, there are hopeful signs. While Mr. Bush should do
more, he has forthrightly called the killings genocide and heaped aid on
Darfur, probably saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Indeed, aid shipments have brought malnutrition rates in much of Darfur
below those of other places in Sudan, partly because donor governments have
“borrowed” aid from other regions. So children are going hungry in southern
and eastern Sudan as a consequence of Darfur.
If Mr. Bush led a determined effort to save Darfur, there would be real hope
for peace here – plus, the international image of the U.S. would improve.
And a new Zogby poll commissioned by the International Crisis Group found
that Americans by margins of six to one favor bolder action in Darfur, such
as a no-fly zone.
But Mr. Bush is covering his eyes. Last year administration figures like
Colin Powell and John Danforth led the response to Darfur, but now neither
Condoleezza Rice nor the White House seems much interested.
Darfur will never be a Somalia or Iraq, because nobody is talking about
sending in American combat troops. But simply an ounce of top-level
attention to Darfur would go a long way to save lives.
In 1999, Madeleine Albright traveled to Sierra Leone and met child amputees
there, wrenching the hearts of American television viewers and making that
crisis a priority in a way that eventually helped resolve it. Ms. Rice could
do the same for Darfur if she would only bother to go.
Mr. Bush values a frozen embryo. But he hasn’t mustered much compassion for
an entire population of terrorized widows and orphans. And he is cementing
in place the very hopelessness he dreads, by continuing to avert his eyes
from the first genocide of the 21st century.
E-mail: [email protected]
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress