Let’s Disarm this Weapon of Mass Destruction

“Impunity for such crimes encourages their occurrence.” – The United Nations

Despite his indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity more than a year ago by the United Nations, Sudanese President Omar Hasssan al Bashir is still free and in power in Sudan.

Rarely do we as Americans see images on the news of the rampant murder occurring in Darfur.  Bashir allows refugee camps full of innocent people to be bombed in order to further his agenda of genocide against the African Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes of the region.

I believe that it is because we view ourselves as being so far removed from the crises in Sudan that we as Americans do not demand more action from our country, the United Nations, and our UN ambassador Susan Rice in interceding in this matter.

Wilfred Owen touches on how the distance can desensitize human beings to the horrors of war.  In his poem Dulce et Decorum Est he discusses the ways in which a country encourages war efforts, telling it’s sons and daughters of the glory in fighting, when the reality is so very far removed from what those on the front lines actually encounter.

‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,’
-Wilfred Owen

Because it is not in our own back yards that thousands are dying brutal deaths daily, it is not necessary for Americans to consider too deeply the matter of Darfur.  But such treatment, such utter disregard of the value of human life would not be tolerated in any Western country.  How then, can we continue to allow it in Africa?  Are African lives less valuable than those found in the western world.  I think not.

Though Bashir has been convicted, he has not been arrested.  He is still free to terrorize whom ever he pleases.  The apathy of the United Nations and the continuing extension of the hand of diplomacy from the countries of the United Nations has not stemmed the tide of blood shed that has claimed the lives of nearly half a million people in Darfur.

In 2005 Rice said “when you’ve got genocide under way and the government is the perpetrator, there is a moral imperative to act.”

But today Rice says that “diplomatic outreach to Sudan should not be seen as wavering on Darfur.”

How can we see diplomatic outreach as anything but wavering?  Continuing to fraternize with a country that is systematically killing a portion of its population does not send a clear message that we do not agree with their policies.  We did not do business with the Dictator Fidel Castro.  We did not align ourselves with Nazi Germany.  So why is Bashir being treated differently?

Hilary Clinton once suggested that a no fly zone should be initiated over Darfur, policed by the UN.  Such action would end the rampant bombing of innocents in refugee camps and villages, and hopefully discourage violence enacted upon innocents on the ground.  This suggestion could help bring about an end to the genocide of Darfur, yet there are no plans to enact such a strategy.

The truth of the matter is that ‘diplomatic outreach’ is wavering on policy in relation to genocide.  It does not send a clear message to Bashir and the people of Sudan.  It does not say that such treatment of innocent people will not be allowed in our modern world.  It says that as long as we as Americans don’t have to see it, continuing diplomacy is more important, that hundreds of thousands of lives are expendable if they are dying at the hands of a country that harbors oil reserves.

Blowin’ in the Wind.

“She said they removed their scarves and used it to tie them up and were taking turns to rape them.  One is 13 years old; the other one is 16.”

The women and children in Darfur are currently being victimized and subjected to one of the worst tools of ethnic cleansing; repeated and violent rape.  According to CNN, girls as young as four have been subjected to this horrifying form of torture.

While reading Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, I was most interested in the differences between her experiences of war as a white, western woman compared to that of the victims of gender bias in Darfur.  Brittain, while undergoing extreme emotional distress and faced with the stress of her patients’ injuries on a daily basis, at least did not face the horrors of living in a war zone, and being subjected to the threat of violence and mutilation on a daily basis.

Brittain tells Roland in one of her early letters, “I picture to myself…Mother’s absolute horror if she could have seen me at 9:15 the other night dashing about and dodging traffic in the slums of Camberwall Green, in the pitch dark of course…It is quite thrilling to be an unprotected female and feel that no one in your immediate surroundings is particularly concerned with what happens to you (213).”  As a young English woman, she has been brought up with the notion that female virginity should be protected.  Her words imply that women of her class do not go about, even at the best of times, with out some form of male companionship, for fear they may be harmed.

Many men in Sudan will no longer accompany the women they know out side of the home, because of the increasing likeliness of being attacked and killed if they defend their loved ones from becoming victims of sexual crimes.

Though Vera is writing from a different time, almost 100 years prior to the conflict of Darfur, it is still relevant to think about race, class, and nationality in relation to sexual crimes.  Rape is one of, if not the most, frequently used form of torture in Darfur.  These women and children have no voice, no protection from an extremely heinous form of violence.

It is my opinion that bringing relief to these victims should be a top priority of the UN.  That America, a country that came to the defense of the oppressed in Iraq, should be more interested in what is happening in Darfur.  Not because in providing some relief we may find oil, but because these are unspeakable crimes that should not be permitted to happen in a world as enlightened as ours.  As members of the United Nations, a group dedicated to protecting the basic humane rights of all the world’s people, we should demand intervention, and a means to bring this atrocious behavior to an end.