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| "The Janjaweed Militias." Free Forum Hosting - ZetaBoards. Web. 08 Dec. 2011. |
Most people don't know that all this began in 2003. Ironically this genocide was unnoticed because it was in the shadows, while the rest of the world's attention was focused on the war in Iraq. The victims are non-Arab tribes known as Muslim-Africans. These people have been politically and economically marginalized. Sudan has a long history of civil disagreement, and since the 1970's Arabs and Muslim-Africans have been in competition over the scarce primary resources of land and water. Darfur, being mostly non-Arab, felt they were being discriminated against and that led to the uprising of two rebel movements. The Janjaweed, hired by the government, consists of 20,000 men mainly on horses or camel. They brought the Darfur citizens to their knees. Not only was the Janjaweed attacking the rebels, as they traveled through Darfur they attacked every village, killed every man, and raped the women.With scarce resources, the people were faced with emergency conditions without government support. Officials in Khartoum (Capital of Sudan) began funding the Arab militia who already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Darfur's population. They destroyed all crops, cut down fruit trees, poisoned water supplies, and slaughtered all cattle. Darfur's citizens had been pushed into the desert or into camps in nearby Chad. Humanitarian aid was not able to keep pace with the growing need. African tribal groups were being slaughtered or were dying of starvation and disease. Which sadly meant that those efforts of helping citizens was not slowing down the death toll. You are all probably thinking the same thing, why is the United Nations not showing a greater effort? Well the answer to that question is simple, and it led to thousands of more deaths. The Sudanese government denied UN rights to air space, so humanitarian supplies were cut off and no armed forces were aloud in the country. With the UN struggling to gain entry to Sudan, it left the African Union's ground force of about 7,000 troops to gain control of the situation. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that 7,000 can't defeat a force of 20,000, so people continued to die. Racism, poverty, greed, and religion all played a role in the genocide of Darfur, espically with a government that does not value human life. In my opinion one of the main causes is that the world just stood back in silence letting the problem grow.
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| Shattered lives: a young boy, in what’s left of his home, after Janjaweed militias attacked. Sven Torfinn / Panos Pictures |
