[Mb-civic] Africa's Brutal Lebensraum By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Mary Louise smn]

>From: Michael Butler <michael at michaelbutler.com>
>Reply-To: mb-civic at islandlists.com
>To: Civic <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
>Subject: [Mb-civic] Africa's Brutal Lebensraum By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
>Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 11:38:41 -0800
>
>The New York Times
>Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
>
>March 14, 2006
>Op-Ed Columnist
>Africa's Brutal Lebensraum
>By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
>
>BILDIQ, Chad
>
>The villagers in this hamlet of thatch-roof mud huts told me that they had
>shot dead a member of the brutal janjaweed militia and pointed to his body.
>I walked over to look at the corpse ‹ and his eyes opened.
>
>He was a teenager, perhaps 16, shot down as he and four other raiders
>attacked this village along the Chad-Sudan border. Most of these villages
>near the town of Adé are unarmed, and it is easy for members of the Arab
>janjaweed to kill, rape and pillage with impunity, while yelling racial
>epithets against the black African tribes they attack. But someone in this
>village had an AK-47 and used it to fend off the attack.
>
>The boy on the ground was slight and wearing old and filthy clothes. He
>followed me with his eyes for 10 seconds and then closed them, moaning
>softly. He had been shot in the waist and could not move.
>
>The janjaweed are the brutes, armed and paid by the Sudanese government, 
>who
>have engaged in a genocidal campaign to destroy villages of African tribes
>in the Darfur region of Sudan. Now Sudan, encouraged by the feebleness of
>the international community's response, is expanding the genocide by 
>sending
>the raiders to attack the same tribes in neighboring Chad.
>
>The villagers vowed not to kill the boy (they were indignant that I thought
>they might), and promised to turn him over to the government. And then they
>showed me someone still more interesting: another captured janjaweed youth
>who was able to tell his story.
>
>This young man was tied up, not particularly harshly, in a hut. He had a
>bloody gash on his forehead where he had been hit with a machete, and it
>seemed he might lose his eye, but he was easily able to answer questions.
>
>"My name is Isak Muhammad," he began. "I am 21 years old." Video of him, of
>the boy who was shot and of other scenes from my journey along the
>Chad-Sudan border, can be viewed here.
>
>Video: The Captured Raider
>An excerpt from "The Genocide Spreads," Nicholas D. Kristof's Op-Ed special
>report. Watch the complete report.
>
>Mr. Isak was not driven by racist abhorrence for the Wadai tribe of this
>village, for he is a Wadai himself. He said a militia leader had simply
>promised the raiders $250 if they succeeded in killing the sheik, as a way
>to terrorize villagers and drive them away.
>
>Where did the militia leader get his money? Almost certainly from the
>Sudanese government.
>
>The Sudanese authorities may not have the money to feed their people, but
>they are spending lavishly on arming proxy forces to invade Chad, in hopes
>of destabilizing tribes and installing a pro-Sudanese pawn as the leader of
>Chad.
>
>So the genocide is not just driven by hatred, but also by opportunistic
>mercenaries. Consider the founder of the janjaweed, Sheik Musa Hilal, a
>ferocious Arab nationalist who has shown particular vigor in slaughtering
>members of the Zaghawa tribe. According to a longtime acquaintance of Mr.
>Musa, the sheik's own mother is Zaghawa.
>
>As in Rwanda or even during the Holocaust, racist ideologies sometimes
>disguise greed, insecurity and other pathologies. Indeed, one of the
>genocide's aims is to drive away African tribes to achieve what Hitler
>called Lebensraum: "living space" for nomadic Arabs and their camels.
>
>So this village is simply a window into an entire region drenched in fear.
>Men walk about carrying homemade spears and machetes, and parents tie
>amulets around their children's necks.
>
>As we left the village, I met a search party looking for six men who had
>disappeared after an attack by other raiders. "We heard gunshots over there
>a couple of minutes ago," said one man, pointing to a nearby hill. "We'll
>wait two hours and then go over and see who was shot."
>
>As the local county leader, Saudi Hassan, puts it, "The janjaweed are using
>humans as targets ‹ they kill a person as if he were a chicken." Whether 
>the
>offenders are Nazis or Hutu extremists or Sudan's janjaweed, that is a 
>crime
>not only against the victims but also against all humanity. You can get
>ideas about what you can do at www.savedarfur.org, the Web site of the Save
>Darfur Coalition, which is planning a major rally on the Washington Mall on
>April 30.
>
>It is brutally demoralizing for people in these villages to be hunted down
>as if they were wild beasts, to have their children pulled from their arms
>and thrown into burning huts. But we should be just as demoralized by our
>own indifference. The shame belongs not to the good people of Darfur and
>Chad, but to ourselves.
>
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