The genocide of black African Muslims in Darfur is possibly the
world's most bizarre genocide. It has no perpetrators, but somehow
is abetted by George W. Bush.
At least that is what one would assume by reading the full-page
advertisement in the October 16 Washington Post, which
also ran in the New York Times and the Chicago
Tribune. The ad was from Evangelicals for Darfur, a coalition of "conservatives
and progressives" organized with help from religious left activist
Jim Wallis of Sojourners.
It is the latest in a long line of advocacy appeals for Darfur
that address President George W. Bush as if he were at best (!)
Kofi Annan, and at worst, Sudanese Islamist dictator Omar
el-Bashir, or perhaps even a janjaweed militia commander. The
parties that should actually be addressed regarding the ongoing
jihad in Western Sudan are Sudan's ruling National Congress Party
(formerly the National Islamic Front) and its proxy militias. But
they are strangely unmentioned in the ad.
Evangelicals for Darfur describe themselves as coming "from
across the evangelical spectrum." As someone who has worked on
Sudan advocacy since 1995, and knows that "yes, Virginia, there
really was a genocide in Sudan prior to Darfur," I wonder why it
took until now for many of these concerned voices suddenly to
speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum waged a genocidal war
against the non-Muslim southern party of the country for two
decades, killing 2 million. That was war was finally negotiated to
an end with essential help by the Bush Administration.
A few of the signatories have been to southern Sudan or have
been a part of the Washington-based Sudan Coalition founded by Nina
Shea of Freedom House and myself. They should explain to the
latecomers that President Bush has done more for persecuted people
in Sudan than anyone before him.
Frankly, I wish our Sudan Coalition could have had the funds for
full-page newspaper ads when the Nuba people were being ethnically
cleansed with scorched-earth, aerial bombardment, and starvation.
(The ad in the Washington Post and other major papers by
itself cost over a half million dollars.) Or when Sudanese
government-orchestrated famine threatened the lives of three
million in Wau, Southern Sudan. Or when southern Sudanese women and
children were being branded and sold into slavery. Or when 40,000+
mostly Dinka young boys fled from their villages and walked to
Ethiopia and have lived as displaced persons in a harsh,
impoverished refugee camp in Kenya since then. Or when some 2,000
of these "Lost Boys" arrived for resettlement in the United States
and needed sponsorship and mentoring in order to not fall through
the cracks here in America. You get the point.
But then I consider how much good hundreds of thousands of
dollars could actually do for the people of Sudan. For instance, in
the Nuba Mountains right now there are over two thousand Darfurian
refugees who have nothing. The Nuba, both Christians and Muslims,
are sharing what little they have with them, but food supplies are
dwindling. The UN's World Food Program has been assured by Khartoum
that "they will take care of things in the Nuba Mountains." Yes,
well, we know what that means.
While some Darfurians have fled to Chad, and others further into
southern Sudan, these refugees walked for almost a thousand miles
to get to the Nuba Mountains. They fled from Darfur, where, as one
young woman told an American who recently visited the area, she had
watched as they killed her family, including her 80
year-old-grandfather, "slicing them up like meat."
These Darfurians know that over 400,000 of their countrymen and
women described by the Washington Post ad in the passive
"have been killed" were killed by somebody! They were killed by
emissaries of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir, who wants to rid
Sudan of every black African Sudanese, whether Christian or Muslim.
These Darfurians know that the 2.5 million "displaced" were forced
from their homes and land by the same Arabist Islamist regime that
displaced over 5 million in southern Sudan.
Unfortunately, the Evangelicals for Darfur seem only to want to
lay the onus on George W. Bush. "Without you, Mr. President, Darfur
doesn't have a prayer," its ad headline reads. "We beseech you to
act on your faith and do the right thing by leading the world to
stop the genocide affecting 'the least of these' in Darfur." This
coalition of "conservatives and progressives" is headquartered with
Jim Wallis's religious left group Sojourners.
Evangelicals for Darfur's website, which is part of Sojourners'
website, includes some "resource" materials that actually get
around to naming who is actually doing the killing in Darfur, i.e.
the Sudanese government and the janjaweed militias. The Arabist
component of Khartoum's agenda is briefly mentioned, but there is
strangely not a word about the radical Islamism that guides the
Sudanese regime and justifies its aggression.
Conveniently, persons who sign up with Evangelicals for Darfur
are also promised regular updates from Jim Wallis'
Sojourners, who can be counted upon to inform evangelicals
about who the real menace is in the world today. And he lives in
Washington, D.C., not Khartoum.
topics:
Islam, NATO, Africa
