Darfur: The Forgotten Genocide

Over 1/4 million murdered. More than 2 million made refugees. Millions of girls and women raped. Thousands of villages burnt to the ground. It is now four years since the genocide in Darfur began.

It is ironic that the genocide in Darfur started at the same time as the attack on Iraq. After it was exposed that Iraq contained no WMD's and didn't pose a threat to any other countries, the apologists for the attack on Iraq excused it by saying that it was helping the people of Iraq. What about the people of Darfur? Why has the "international community" turned a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur?

The first reason was of course that the attack on Iraq wasn't done to help the people of Iraq. The second reason is oil. Many countries, especially China and Russia, import a great deal of oil from Sudan. They don't want to risk this by helping the people of Darfur.

And what of the organisation which is meant to prevent such genocide? During the last four years the UN has passed 16 resolutions on Darfur but it hasn't enforced a single one of them. Why? What makes Darfur so different from Kuwait, Congo, Lebanon, Kashmir, East Timor, Bosnia, Cyprus, Kosovo, Liberia, Ivory Coast etc? It is this kind of picking and choosing which has discredited the UN in the eyes of so many people in the world.

The UN may be the sum of it's members and it is true that it cannot do anything without the full support of the five permanent members. But when members, such as China and Russia, prevent it from doing its job merely out of self interest, why do other members and the Secretary General keep quiet? Why don't they expose the outrageous hypocrisy and double standards?

Instead of intervening themselves to protect the people of Darfur, the "international community" and the UN expect the African Union to do it. This would be the same corrupt, impotent African Union who's members include Mugabe's Zimbabwe and, er, Sudan.