When Serbs massacred 5,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, the Arab world protested. When Rwandan Hutus turned on the Tutsi minority in their community in a genocidal campaign of the utmost savagery, the Arab world protested. Now that Sudanese Arabs have turned on the black Fur minority in Darfur, the Arab world cannot remain silent.
It is clear that what has been happening in Darfur is ethnic cleansing on a scale of which the Serb militias would be proud. UN figures, which are probably conservative, indicate that more than 10,000 people have been killed and a million driven from their homes. A region whose ethnic minority inhabitants had protested at government neglect has been turned into a killing field by militias, whose crimes the central government in Khartoum seems to have done little to stop. There are indeed allegations contained in an unpublished UN report that the Khartoum administration has been actively involved in the ruthless campaign against the Fur people.
However, the public findings of the UN have stopped short of such accusations. This has infuriated the United States, which wants the held-back part of the report published. But the UN’s position is explicable. All the evidence it has gathered comes from Fur refugees in neighboring Chad. Its investigators have not yet been able to visit the Darfur region itself to verify the refugees’ claims. That trip, which has been repeatedly delayed, is now going to happen, though the government in Khartoum has yet to respond to the published UN report.
The Sudanese authorities must immediately facilitate that UN visit. Failing to do so will be tantamount to admitting guilt. If officials have been complicit in ethnic cleansing, action must be taken against them. Most importantly, the militias that stand accused of these atrocities must be rounded up and brought to justice. The government must act swiftly to restore peace and security to Darfur. In any event, it is in Khartoum’s own interests that the full picture is revealed.
Though it may grieve the Arab world to suspect that one of its members has behaved contrary to the standards of Islam and civilized behavior, no partiality can be shown. If Sudanese officials have indeed behaved like Milosevic’s old Serbian regime, then they must be condemned with exactly the same vehemence. To try to apply double standard would be indefensible.
The overwhelming issue is that the crime of genocide deserves the most bitter censure, whether it is perpetrated by Serbs against Bosnians, Australians against Aboriginals, Hutus against Tutsis or Sudanese Arabs against Furs, because such crimes shame every decent person everywhere.
