Perspective on Darfur; perspective on genocide

June 22, 2004 |

Glen Reynolds over at Instapundit.com is continuing to bring much needed attention to Darfur.
Here is his latest post, which links to a summary of the situation on
the Sudan/Chad border, where the Arab militias are following refugees
across into Chad and continuing to attack them.

The news out of Sudan is ambiguous. On the one hand, the government
says it is going to disarm its militias. On the other hand, it is not
clear at all what is really happening, or is going to happen, that is
different than what has been going on. The militias are essentially
renegade gangs operating on an unpoliced border of a state the size of
Texas. Disarming them will be no mean feat, even if the government is
sincere in wanting to do so. And sincerity cannot be assumed from this
genocidal regime.

I continue to believe that it is imperative that an international force move into the area to protect people.

What governments say is only the start, at best, of change. We need
action on the ground of massive proportions, and at this time we have
very little direct access to information from Darfur–because the
government has kept observers out.

On a personal note, I received a disturbing but enlightening email a few minutes ago, which I share with you.
I subscribe to an email list the comes out of the University of
Colorado, and is loosely concerned with war and peace. Today one of the
members passed on a story about exhuming the mass graves that resulted
from the genocide in the former Yugoslavia. It gave me a real sense of
what we so loosely call the “reality on the ground.”

June 22, 2004 | Permalink to Passion of the Present post

[more on Sudan at http://passionofthepresent.org]

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