Genocide In Darfur

From February of 2003 up until this day, the ongoing genocide in Darfur has had almost unsightly outcomes. In a country about the size of Texas, a huge conflict began to arise. The genocide started due to the conflicts between the non-Arab rebel groups, Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality movement (JEM). It began back in 2003 when the groups took up arms and began to accuse the Sudanese government of oppressing the non-Arab Sudanese over the Sudanese Arabs living in Darfur. The government was believed to be oppressing the non-Arabs of their rights. The conflict exploded between the Arabs and non-Arabs when the group of Sudanese Arabs, the Janjaweed entered the genocide, causing destruction and massacres like never before.

The non-Arabs began to protest the government due to an unfair system for politics and economics. The non-Arabs only wanted to fight for their right to equality with the Arab citizens of Sudan. This conflict is a fragile subject to work with due to all the different turns it took upon developing into genocide. The non-Arabs took up arms against the government and at that point, the government of Darfur sent a governmentally funded armed group called the Janjaweed to fight back against the non-Arab rebel groups in Sudan.

The Janjaweed are best described as the armed partisans that have been taken from the Arab tribes in Darfur. In the Western section of Sudanese context Janjaweed refers to outlaws, guns or horse. To this day, they continue to terrorize the non-Arab regions of Darfur. The armed gunmen ride through on their horses, stopping at local villages and pillaging, raping, and massacring the tribe that lives in the village. The ethnic groups they are notorious for terrorizing the most are the Fur, Tunjur, Masalit and Zaghawa. These groups are known to be rebel groups that oppose the current Sudanese government, which is a military government where the president is Omar Al-Bashir. The Darfur problems began back in 2003 when the people who were being politically and economically marginalized by the military government (most non-Arabs) began to contest the government. Had there been a simple sense of equality among all the different ethnic, racial and religious groups in Darfur, there would not be a genocide occurring today.

The conflict between the Janjaweed, rebel groups and the government of Sudan is a hard conflict to solve. It would need the resolution between all three groups for their political and economic groups. Due to the variety of different ethnic, religious and racial differences between all of the citizens of Darfur, it’s hard to find a resolution for all of the different warring parties’ arguments. Until someone else steps in to try and solve the problems occurring in Darfur, there does not look like there will be an end to this horrible genocide.

The United States and United Nations involvement with the genocide occurring in Darfur has been slim to none. It has been said that the United States needs to begin to deploy “peacekeepers” to stop the “ethnic cleansing” occurring in Darfur, but there has been no sign of that happening yet. Many groups like “Stop the Genocide in Darfur” and “USAID” have been sending supplies and doing what they can to help, but this war is far too brutal to end with just the help of a few supplies and US officers. It is believed that it is the United States and United Nations job to stop anything else that begins to look like another Holocaust, and with the massacres, displacement, and attacks on the community, the genocide is beginning to turn down that path. After Rwanda occurred, people believed that the United Nations would immediately step up into stopping the genocide in Darfur. The United Nations has teamed up with the African Union in entering Darfur, however the African Union has been criticized for their weak overall performance in Darfur. The United Nations has refused to call this situation in Darfur genocide, but the United States has not. The fact that the United States has classified this war in Darfur as genocide but has not begun to take the serious action needed to end the killings is shocking to most people.

So what are some of the effects that the Janjaweed has had on the non-Arab rebel groups of Darfur? The number of people affected by the conflict in Darfur is approximately 4.7 million people out of the 6 million people living in Darfur, or 78%. The number of deaths since the beginning of the 2003 conflict is hard to estimate, although it has been reliably reported to be 200,000 to 400,000 lives. The United Nations has estimated that around 2.5 million Darfuris have fled their home to live in refugee camps or as just an attempt to escape the Janjaweed. While the humanitarian existence in Darfur continues to strengthen, the conflict is still very sensitive and very brutal.

Today, the genocide in Darfur is still going on. The sad fate is that the media has slowly toned down the information and coverage of the genocide. It has become seemingly less popular with the government and has been pushed back out of their minds. This conflict really should not be ignored, as it is classified as genocide and the people of Darfur are still suffering severely. This may be a touchy subject and situation, but it is still a brutal and deathly one as well.

In conclusion, the genocide in Darfur is a sensitive and still ongoing conflict between the non-Arabs and the Janjaweed. The fight over equality has turned into a stronger sense of discrimination and pain overall. The United States and United Nations have sent help for the people of Darfur, but have not done everything that they could. The attempts to make amends have been weak and the genocide still continues to this day. Hopefully, the war will eventually come to an end but in order to do that, Darfuris will need all the help that they can get.

www.darfuraustralia.org/files/Darfur%20-%20The%20Statistics.pdf

http://www.africafiles.org/printableversion.asp?id=21207

http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background

http://darfurinformation.com/darfur-in-perspective/page-1.asp

http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-darfur

http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=24

http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unamid/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/africa/darfur/militia.html

Children of Darfur

While the genocide in Darfur may be pushed aside or to the backs of the minds for many people, the children in Darfur seem to understand exactly what is happening. This article of children's drawings of the genocide in Darfur is saddening. Images such as this one show that the children are being scarred by the sight of horror and terror every day in Darfur. We may believe that only adults should have a voice in the conflicts in Darfur, but images like this picture show that children need to voice what they see in their homes as well. These drawings are what the children who live in Darfur and other areas of Sudan see happening every day in their own homes and personally, I would be terrified to live just one day there as compared to them having to call that sight "home." It just proves further that we need to be assisting them in Darfur because these are the minds of children who have the opportunity to be doing something great, but they will not ever have the chance living in conditions like these or refugee camps for the rest of their lives.

Darfurian Voices

This 8 minute video on Darfur, Darfuian Voices, really had a strong impact on me. The Darfuris talking in it open up to the reality of the conflict happening in Darfur and it is so powerful to watch the pain and suffering they go through every day, knowing that this conflict should not be there and just wanting it to end. They talk about leaving their homes and the struggle they go through every day wondering if this conflict will ever end, or if anyone will hear them. This video was designed to let some of the voices of Darfur be heard to the rest of the world. One quote from the video that really struck me the most was "We are helpless even though we talk with enthusiasm and emphasis. We are wondering if our voices ever get out there-but we keep talking." It is saddening to see that the conflict between the people of Darfur is almost helpless, because no one will listen to their own citizens. It seems as though everyone in Darfur is looking for a change, but unfortunately the differences in racial, religious and ethnic group add up to different views of "change" as well.

Political Cartoon

When I first went onto google to search for political cartoons of Darfur, I noticed a sad pattern. They all involved the laziness or ignorance of everyone else in the world. With a conflict this big, and with so many people dying, I feel shocked that no one felt the need to intervene with the genocide in Darfur. The United Nations United Declaration of Human Rights states in article 5 that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Regarding this as a true statement, this would mean that the genocide in Darfur should not be ignored. The United States has classified the conflict in Darfur as a genocide but yet we remain watching nothing productive happen for the people of Darfur. People are dying every day and all we can do is sit back and watch it continue. However, there are groups like Save Darfur who continue to send aid and officers to help the people of Darfur escape the pain and torture and bring them to a new life that is safer. The sad truth of this all is that the war is still going in Darfur, and we have not stopped it yet.