Author: Mindy Belz
Publication: World Magazine
Date: January 24, 2004
URL: http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/01-24-04/international_1.asp
SUDAN: For Islamists in Khartoum,
only Arab Muslims are Muslim enough
For more than 20 years the Sudanese
government attacked non-Muslims in the south, wiping out largely Christian
villages and pagan tribes in attempts to Islamicize the country. Now, with
a brokered peace agreement between northern officials and southern rebels
nearly complete, government-approved militias are raiding the western province
of Darfur, killing fellow Muslims in the predominantly Muslim area.
The attacks suggest an attempt at
"ethnic cleansing"-Arab Muslims vs. African Muslims.
Fighting in Darfur has hurt about
1 million out of a population of 6 million residents in less than a year.
Thousands have died and more than 700,000 have been displaced from their
homes since last March, according to United Nations monitors. "The United
Nations now regards the worsening situation in Darfur as probably the worst
humanitarian crisis in the world at this moment," said Jan Egeland, UN
undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.
Well-armed Arab militias have attacked
villages belonging to three tribes that identify themselves as Muslim but
are indigenous black Africans. Seventy thousand refugees from Darfur have
already arrived in neighboring Chad, and 300 died in one week at one UN
refugee camp.
Darfur's western reaches are remote,
and Khartoum has cut access by aid groups and human-rights monitors. It
has prevented flights to the region, even limiting the sale of fuel so
aid planes cannot reach the area from UN airfields.
Despite the blackout, residents
are leaking reports of deaths to Sudanese living abroad. On Jan. 1, according
to one document, Arab militias attacked five villages north of the city
of Kass, killing 19 civilians ranging in age from a 1-year-old girl named
Samia Abdelhameid to a 74-year-old man named Abkaer Hassan Haroun.
"I believe this is an elimination
of the black race," one tribal leader told UN monitors. "The government
is arming some tribes, just Arabs, they go and kill, take the belongings
and rape the women."
Mukesh Kapila, UN humanitarian aid
coordinator for Sudan, said the reports suggest ethnic cleansing, and possibly
genocide. News of massacres, starvation, and water shortages all suggest
subhuman conditions. "Even animals don't live like that," Mr. Kapila said.
While Christian groups and politicians
have been at the forefront to condemn atrocities in Sudan, few are speaking
out for Darfur. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell personally
intervened for more than two years to bring Sudan's President Omar Bashir
into peace negotiations with Sudan People's Liberation Movement head John
Garang. Those talks have bogged down for the past year over three contested
areas of Sudan claimed by both rebels and the government. Like Darfur,
those regions have large Muslim populations who nonetheless align themselves
with the self- government aspirations of Sudan's southern Christian minority.
Now, with a final deal nearing,
none of the principals want to throw another contested area into the talks.
Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell have phoned the negotiators over the last
month. Mr. Powell phoned Mr. Bashir, Mr. Garang, and Sudan Vice President
Ali Osman Taha most recently on Dec. 30- underscoring how crucial signing
a peace accord is to the White House.
For Khartoum the stakes are also
enormous. Mr. Bashir would like to remove his National Islamic Front government
from the U.S. terrorism list. Like Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, President Bashir
is seeking brownie points with Washington, offering information on al-Qaeda
suspects and promising cooperation in the war on terror. But events in
Darfur suggest the government is not ready to give up on its vision for
an Arab-dominated Sudan.
Smith College Sudan scholar Eric
Reeves said that with killing in Darfur, "it is not possible to rejoice
in terms we might have. You would have peace in one part of Sudan but not
in this part." Mr. Reeves believes the U.S. focus on the Middle East precludes
proper attention to what amounts to ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
But how can even Khartoum's government
justify wiping out fellow Muslims? The Khartoum mindset is Islamist, explained
Mr. Reeves: "But it is also Islamist as reflected through Arab identity.
African Muslims are not as Muslim as Arab Muslims." In the Nile River region,
said Mr. Reeves, "it is part of the longstanding quest for the educated
Arab Muslim elite to control the fate of the entire country."
That kind of racism is spiking the
death rate. "What is so frightening is that there are 6 to 7 million people
in Darfur," said Mr. Reeves. "We have seen one- tenth of the population
displaced in under one year. I don't know anywhere in southern Sudan over
two decades where that rate has applied."
