Heartbreaking Wasington Post Editorial on Darfur this Saturday Morning, July 31

Here is a an editorial from The Washington Post this morning. The entire piece is worth reading, but here are excerpts:

Death and Deception in Darfur

By Daniel Wolf
Saturday, July 31, 2004

SOUTH DARFUR, Sudan -- On the morning of July 12, hell descended on the village of Donki Dereisa. Shortly before sunrise, Fatima Ibrahim, 28, awoke to the deafening sound of exploding ordnance falling from the sky. As she emerged from her mud hut with her 10-year-old daughter, she saw fires blazing all around and scores of heavily armed men on horseback attacking from every direction. With bullets whistling past, Ibrahim and her daughter ran for their lives, ducking into a nearby ravine, where they hid without food or water for the next two days.

From the ditch, Ibrahim witnessed a horrific avalanche of violence that will haunt her for life. With Sudanese foot soldiers at their side, the mounted attackers shot the panicked and unarmed villagers in cold blood. Approximately 150 people, including 10 women, were killed. But the worst was to come.

Ibrahim told Refugees International about a week after the attack that among those captured during the assault were four of her brothers and six young children, including three of her cousins. As Ibrahim watched in horror, several of the attackers began grabbing the screaming children and throwing them one by one into a raging fire. One of the male villagers ran from his hiding place to plead for their lives. It was a fatal error. The raiders subdued the man and later beheaded him and dismembered his body. All six of the children were burned. Ibrahim's four brothers have not been heard from since.

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..On July 3, the United Nations and the Sudanese government issued a joint communiqué in which Khartoum formalized commitments it had made to Powell and Annan to immediately disarm the Janjaweed, prosecute egregious abuses of human rights and honor a cease-fire agreement reached two months earlier.

But recent events suggest that in making these commitments, Khartoum's objective was to stall for time in the hope it might deceive the international community into believing the crisis had been brought under control. This cynical approach is graphically illustrated by the recent arrest and prosecution of a group of alleged Janjaweed militiamen on charges of robbery and murder in southern Darfur's provincial capital of Nyala. According to reliable sources inside the government, the "Janjaweed" were in fact common criminals plucked from a Nyala jail, who were informed that they would be sentenced to death unless they agreed to pose as Janjaweed and confess to the crimes. The true killers remain at large.

Nor is there any indication that Khartoum intends to disarm or otherwise rein in the Janjaweed. To the contrary, the government and the Janjaweed have continued jointly and relentlessly to pursue their terrorist campaign in the few remaining regions of Darfur under government control where African villagers have not yet been driven from their homes.

Comments

[Susan]

I also posted that story yesterday on my website. It paints such a vivid, yet despicable scene I felt needed to be seen and heard.

I just found your website today and I applaud your labor of love and peace.

[Jim Moore]

thanks very much Susan. Let's hope by joining together we can help.

[Eliza]

I don't know if I can take any more of this horror! As I sit here at my desk at work, fretting about being overweight, a little financially broke, bored of my job, and wondering about whether to fold my laundry tonight or mow my lawn.... I read about the people who are being brutally murdered in the Sudan.

I better find something more to do than sit here and complain about the quality of my life. Maybe I should take my sorry butt to the Sudan and live there until I'm able to grow some gratitude.

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I just found your website today and I applaud your labor of love and peace.