WHERE KILLERS ROAM, THE POISON SPREADS
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times
March 7, 2006 Tuesday
Late Edition – Final
Along The Chad-Sudan Border
For more than two years, the world has pretty much ignored the
genocide unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan, just as it turned
away from the slaughter of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians and Rwandans
in earlier decades.
And now, apparently encouraged by the world’s acquiescence, Sudan is
sending its proxy forces to invade neighboring Chad and kill and rape
members of the same African tribes that have already been ethnically
cleansed in Darfur itself.
I’ve spent the last three days along the Chad-Sudan border, where this
brutal war is unfolding. But “war” doesn’t feel like the right term,
for that implies combat between armies.
What is happening here is more like what happens in a stockyard.
Militias backed by Sudan race on camels and pickup trucks into Chadian
villages and use machine guns to mow down farming families, whose only
offense is that they belong to the wrong tribes and have black skin.
I found it eerie to drive on the dirt track along the border because
countless villages have been torched or abandoned. Many tens of
thousands of peasants have fled their villages, and you can drive for
mile after mile and see no sign of life — except for the smoke of the
villages or fields being burned by the Sudan-armed janjaweed militia.
In some places the janjaweed, made up of nomadic Arab tribes that
persecute several black African tribes, have turned villages into
grazing lands for the livestock they have stolen. At one point,
my vehicle got stuck in the sand, and a group of janjaweed children
materialized and helped push me out. The children were watching a
huge herd of cattle with many different brands. Their fathers were
presumably off killing people.
This is my sixth trip to the Darfur region, and I’ve often seen burned
villages within Darfur itself, but now the cancer has spread to Chad.
One young man, Haroun Ismael, returned with me — very nervously —
to the edge of his village of Karmadodo, between the towns of Adre
and Ade. Eleven days earlier, Sudanese military aircraft and a force
of several hundred janjaweed had suddenly attacked the village. Mr.
Haroun and his wife had run for their lives, with his wife carrying
their 3-month-old baby, Ahmed.
The janjaweed raiders overtook Mr. Haroun’s wife and beat her so badly
that she is still unconscious. They also grabbed Ahmed from her arms.
“They looked at the baby,” Mr. Haroun added, “and since he was a boy,
they shot him.”
Sudan is also arming and equipping a proxy army of Chadian rebels under
a commander named Muhammad Nour. The rebels were repulsed when they
tried to invade Chad in late December, and now they are regrouping
for another attempt.
Sudan’s aim seems to be to overthrow Chad’s president and install a
pawn in his place, in part because this would allow Sudan’s Army to
attack rebels in Darfur from both directions.
Regardless of whether the rebels succeed in overthrowing Chad’s
government, they could ignite a new civil war in Chad. Much will depend
on whether the French will use their military base in Chad to fight any
Sudanese-sponsored invasion; the French aren’t saying what they’ll do.
Chad’s army is too small to defend its border, so it tries to
defend potential invasion routes. That leaves villages in other
areas defenseless.
“See that smoke over there?” asked Ali Muhammad in the market town
of Borota. “The janjaweed are burning our fields today.”
“Most people here have fled,” he added, “but I have old family members
to look after, so I can’t leave.”
These areas are too insecure for the United Nations and most
international aid workers, who are already doing a heroic and dangerous
job in Darfur and Chad. So Mr. Ali and others left behind get no food
aid and go hungry.
In the last few weeks, President Bush has shown an increased
willingness to address the slaughter in Darfur. He should now encourage
the French to use their forces to defend Chad from proxy invasions,
make a presidential speech to spotlight the issue, attend a donor
conference for Darfur, encourage the use of a NATO bridging force
until U.N. peacekeepers can arrive, enforce a no-fly zone and open
a new initiative for peace talks among the sheiks of Darfur.
The present Western policy of playing down genocide and hoping
it will peter out has proved to be bankrupt practically as well as
morally. Granted, there are no neat solutions in Darfur. But ignoring
brutality has only magnified it, and it’s just shameful to pretend not
to notice the terrified villagers here, huddling with their children
each night and wondering when they are going to be massacred.