The Cruelty of Man

Sadly, it's beginning to seem that Rwanda isn't going to an anomaly. Things have been stewing in Sudan for some time, and the world is simply not doing anything. Granted, it may be difficult for some of the leading powers, such as the United States, to do anything because of overcommitment. Still, tackling the troubles in Darfur is not beyond the resources of a committed multinational force of European and African enforcers (I don't want to use the word "peacekeeper", because unfortunately that would just mean more impotent blue helmets). And I do mean committed, because anything short of an overwhelming political will to do the right thing and force a cleanup of government, but more than doing nothing, will result in a bloody mess that will leave yet another failed state, which is worse than a rogue state, as we've seen before.

So perhaps the government-backed Janjaweed haven't killed a million or two as was the case with Rwanda. But how can one sanction what Nicholas Kristof (rightly) refers to as "a policy of rape"?

More than two years after the genocide in Darfur began, the women of Kalma Camp - a teeming squatter's camp of 110,000 people driven from their burned villages - still face the risk of gang rape every single day as they go out looking for firewood.

Nemat, a 21-year-old, told me that she left the camp with three friends to get firewood to cook with. In the early afternoon a group of men in uniforms caught and gang-raped her.

"They said, 'You are black people. We want to wipe you out,' " Nemat recalled.

...

On March 26, a 17-year-old student named Hawa went to a French-run clinic in Kalma and reported that she had been raped. A French midwife examined her and confirmed that she was bleeding and had been raped.

But an informer in the clinic alerted the police, who barged in and - over the determined protests of two Frenchwomen - carried Hawa off to a police hospital, where she was chained to a cot by one leg and one arm. A doctor there declared that she had not been raped after all, and Hawa was then imprisoned for a couple of days. The authorities are now proposing that she be charged with submitting false information.

...

Doctors Without Borders issued an excellent report in March noting that it alone treated almost 500 rapes in a four-and-a-half-month period. Sudan finally reacted to the report a few days ago - by arresting an Englishman and a Dutchman working for Doctors Without Borders.

...

I'm still chilled by the matter-of-fact explanation I received as to why it is women who collect firewood, even though they're the ones who are raped. The reason is an indication of how utterly we are failing the people of Darfur, two years into the first genocide of the 21st century.

"It's simple," one woman here explained. "When the men go out, they're killed. The women are only raped."

Here we see not only the evil of a single man, but what cruelties men can visit upon one another, even systematically. That so-called conservatives haven't taken notice is hardly surprising. What is disheartening is that our leading intellectual lights would rather fight political and culture wars at home than extend the tools of a free and just society abroad.

But you can help. Visit Save Darfur.org, the Darfur Information Center, or Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

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