Kristof: I tilt obsessively at the windmills of Darfur because, quite simply, its people haunt me

July 10, 2008 11:22 am henrymunsonjr Genocide

In explaining why Darfur haunts him Nicolas Kristof lists the following images: “the young woman who deliberately made a diversion of herself so the janjaweed would gang-rape her and miss her little sister running in the opposite direction; the man whose eyes were gouged out with a bayonet; the group of women beaten with their own babies until the children were dead.”

Nicholas D. Kristof - The G-8 and Darfur, NYTimes.com, July 10, 2008

The Armenian genocide still festers after nearly a century; and former President Bill Clinton has said that his greatest foreign-policy mistake was his failure to respond in Rwanda. In the same way, the G-8’s collective shrug today about the Darfur genocide — because the victims are black, impoverished and hidden from television cameras — will be a lingering stain.

After five years of genocide, President Bush still hasn’t taken as simple a step as imposing a no-fly zone or even giving a prime-time speech about it. He gave Beijing a gift, his pledge to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics, without pushing hard for China to suspend military spare-parts and arms deliveries to Sudan.

The Islamic world has been even more myopic, particularly since the victims in Darfur are all Muslim. Do dead Muslims count only when Israel is the culprit? Can’t the Islamic world muster one-hundredth as much indignation for the genocidal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims as it can for a few Danish cartoons?

This coming Monday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is expected to seek an arrest warrant in connection with Darfur, and his past statements suggest that it may be for the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for genocide. That would be a historic step requiring follow-through.

A personal note: I have seen children dying of AIDS and hunger; I have had malaria and been chased through the jungle by militias. I want the G-8 to address all the aspects of global poverty, yet nothing affects me as much as what I have seen in Darfur.

I tilt obsessively at the windmills of Darfur because, quite simply, its people haunt me: the young woman who deliberately made a diversion of herself so the janjaweed would gang-rape her and miss her little sister running in the opposite direction; the man whose eyes were gouged out with a bayonet; the group of women beaten with their own babies until the children were dead.

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