Darfur and the Middle East

This is an incredible op-ed by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. He consistently highlights the humanitarian emergency in Darfur -- something the media has largely forgotten. This op-ed compares what is happening in Lebanon to what is happening in Darfur. He is right on -- it doesn't make sense... I agree that what is happening in Lebanon is disgusting (see my post below) and it can be easily resolved by Israel's cessation of targeting civilians. However, what is happening in Darfur is a GENOCIDE and it has impacted hundreds of thousands of civilians while the world largely just ignores it. It is not fair.

New York Times
August 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

Shrugs for the Dead
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

This is the tale of two military interventions, of which one happened and the other didn’t.

Three weeks ago, with President Bush supplying the weaponry and moral support, Israel began bombarding Lebanon. The war has killed hundreds of people, galvanized international attention and may lead to an international force of perhaps 20,000 peacekeepers.

Three years ago, Sudan began a genocide against African tribes in its Darfur region. That war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and it is now spreading. There is talk of U.N. peacekeepers someday, but none are anywhere in sight.

The moral of the story? Never, ever be born to a tribe that is victim to genocide in Africa.

Arabs have often argued that Americans have a double standard in the Middle East: We are more solicitous of casualties in Israel than in Gaza or Lebanon. I think they’re right, for a variety of reasons. (One is that terror attacks are particularly newsworthy; another is that journalists are more likely to live in Jerusalem than Gaza.)

But if we have double standards, so do Arabs. I sympathize with their horror at what is happening in Lebanon, but I wish they were just as outraged when Muslims slaughter Muslims in Darfur.

Even the world as a whole has double standards. The U.S. and European countries are working frenetically on a U.N. solution in Lebanon, and there is talk of rapidly sending European peacekeepers to stop the bloodshed. In Darfur, there is nothing like as much interest in what is often considered the ultimate human crime: genocide.

The Tyndall Report, which monitors television network evening news programs, says that since the bombardment of Lebanon began, the crisis there has received more minutes of coverage on average each week than the Darfur genocide has received in total since it began in 2003.

Meanwhile, Darfur continues to drift toward chaos, and the contagion is spreading into Chad and Central African Republic. We may remember Darfur as only the beginning of a much broader calamity in all three countries that ended up claiming millions of lives.

There is, of course, no direct connection between the events in Lebanon and those in Darfur. But indirectly there is: the Arab president of Sudan is manipulating the anti-American feeling sweeping the Arab world to bolster his own authority and defy peacekeeping efforts. In this crazy world of ours, the bombardment of Lebanon has become one more reason to kill African villagers.

So what do we do with these two messes?

In the case of the Middle East, it’s time to use the crisis to push for a major settlement between Israel and Lebanon, even if that means Israel gives up Shebaa Farms and the U.S. engages in direct talks with Syria. Also, President Bush should put much more energy and initiative into he Israeli-Palestinian peace effort.

Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser, says that when he was flying by helicopter to the Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David in 2000, President Clinton turned to him and said, “We’re either going to succeed or get caught trying.” In other words, even if the effort to achieve a Middle East peace failed, there would still be a payoff for the U.S. in the court of global public opinion.

“We used to get criticized all the time for being too tough on the Palestinians, on the Arabs,” said Dennis Ross, a Middle East envoy for both President Clinton and the first President Bush. “But nobody ever accused us of not being passionate about trying to resolve the conflict. We got enormous credit for that, because we showed we weren’t indifferent to a core grievance in the region. It’s been an enormous mistake in the last few years to send a message of indifference.”

In the case of Darfur, what we need is precisely the attention that the Lebanon conflict has been getting in the last few weeks; a high-level U.S. envoy would be a start. And while we’re working to get U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur itself, we need to send an international force to the Chad side of the Sudan-Chad border, to stop the genocidal marauders who are invading Chad and destabilizing that country. Chad wants such a force — and it just might keep the catastrophe from spreading across the region.

Both of these cataclysms demand our attention. The killing of children is a tragedy even when they lack geopolitical significance, even when they are simply part of a knotty African genocide that doesn’t make the television news.

Frustrations

The whole middle east conflict has really bothered me the past several weeks. In any crisis or disaster I immediately identify with the vulnerable and the poor. There is something inside me that just wants to SCREAM when there is any sense of injustice. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are displaced in Lebanon right now. Aid supplies can not get to them. There is a lack of water and sanitation. Civilians feel like the victims of a war they had nothing to do with.
I just have to say I am incredibly disappointed in the response to what is happening -- especially in Lebanon. The fact that any country (ahem...the US) would allow any other country in the world (Israel...) to basically kill as many children and other innocent victims as they deem necessary in order to "disarm" Hezbollah without allowing any avenues for civilians to escape (by bombing bridges, roads, airports, etc) OR any avenues for humanitarian aid to get to the injured and displaced is just dispicable. The bottom line is that these are human beings who are bearing the brunt of a decades long fight. The only reason the US is not screaming about this is because it is Israel doing the killing. That's the unfortunate truth. It shouldn't matter if it is Israel, China or Mickey Mouse who is killing innocent civilians -- it should be condemned! Most humanitarian organizations are publically pleading for a ceasefire and for the protection of civilians. But the battle rages on.... and we just have to wonder when will the world ever learn that violence does not bring peace....