Jessica Purcell: US must act to stop Darfur genocide

Thirty villages were burned to the ground. Over 200 people killed. Over 200 girls and women were raped -- some by up to 14 assailants and in front of their fathers. A further 150 women and 200 children were abducted." These statements, documented by the United Nations describe a February 27th attack in Tawilah, an episode representative of atrocities committed all across the Darfur region of western Sudan. Such atrocities -- rape, murder, and abduction -- are continuing as you read this.

Last month, I attended a breakfast that featured Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times reporter and columnist who has written a series of pieces on the crisis in Sudan. He spoke eloquently and passionately about interviewing survivors in Darfur and about how desperately the people there need international attention. As many have noted, much of the world -- including our own government and the United Nations -- did nothing but watch the disaster unfold in Darfur until Kristof began documenting the intimate details of its horrors.

There have long been conflicts in Sudan, a country mostly divided between Arabs (39 percent of the population) in the north, who control the government, and black Africans in the south (52 percent of the population). Since the institution of fundamentalist Islamic law in 1983, the two groups -- different in ethnicity, language, religion and history -- have been engaged in an ongoing civil war. In 2003, international peace agreements were signed, and the future of Sudan looked brighter. But just as conflicts in the south were coming to an end, war erupted in the west, in the Darfur region. There, the Janjaweed, an Arab militia organized, armed and financed by the Sudanese government, is systematically cleansing the countryside of black Muslims.

According to the United Nations, Darfur is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. So far, 1.2 million Sudanese have been killed or forced from their homes. The Sudan-Chad border is filling up with refugees, 80 percent of them women whose families have been killed and who themselves have often been raped and mutilated by their attackers. The border region, the only place these refugees can now live, is a barren, desolate place with little cover. If nothing is done, estimates are that 320,000 Sudanese will be dead by the end of the year.

These mass deaths are the result of what is clearly genocide. Yet the Bush administration has yet to acknowledge what is happening in Darfur, instead only describing it vaguely as "a new chapter of tragedy in Sudan's troubled history." Kristof did praise President Bush for at least making a statement at all, and gave credit to Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for visiting Darfur and acknowledging the emergency.

The short statement Bush wrote about Darfur in April created enough pressure for the Sudanese government to back down slightly and allow aid groups easier access to the refugees. "So, Mr. Bush, if a single written statement will do so much good, why won't you let the word 'Darfur' pass your lips?" Kristof asks in his June 26th column. "Why the passivity in the face of evil?"

After a series of horrific genocides throughout the world in the past decade -- the most notorious of which occurred in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia -- the slow response of the United States and the United Nations is surprising. Didn't we learn any lesson from the past? Didn't Kofi Annan recently confess about Rwanda, "I realized after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done"? Why then, are so many doing so little?

One answer articulated recently by James Traub is that the world is preoccupied with war in Iraq. For the U.S., involving ourselves with the government of another Muslim country at this time is too dangerous, and could further destabilize our presence in the region. Further, "the war in Iraq has hopelessly muddied the waters on the legitimacy of intervention." If true, that statement not only bodes ill for the future, but also reveals another deadly consequence of war in Iraq.

That explanation, and others, however, fails to explain America's hypocrisy. The Bush administration can no longer claim that we invaded Iraq to confiscate weapons of mass destruction because none have been found. So Bush has turned around and justified the invasion of Iraq by pointing to Saddam's atrocious human rights record. If, in fact, we were so horrified by past atrocities committed in Iraq, why do we do nothing in Darfur when genocide is happening right now?

I became aware of the tragedy in Sudan simply by showing up for work this summer. I am an intern at the International Rescue Committee, a non-profit organization that provides aid for refugees in over 25 countries, including Sudan, who are fleeing war or persecution. I knew I wanted to do humanitarian work, but for a long time my interest was vague. Human rights abuses always seemed terrible and important to stop - but removed from my life. That kind of thinking, however, is dangerous. It is allowing issues like this one to remain distant that allows them to happen and to continue.

It is our responsibility to stay informed about the world around us and to work to see that the United States fights human rights abuses. If we don't care, and if the world's most powerful nation won't stop genocide, who will?

Jessica Purcell is a College sophomore from New York.

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