[Mb-civic] Where Killers Roam, the Poison Spreads By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 7, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Where Killers Roam, the Poison Spreads
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

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 Adré and Adé. 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.

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