An email from the Save Darfur Colalition.





Happy Holidays!

Would you be willing to include the people of Darfur in your Thanksgiving?

All you have to do is make a short announcement about the crisis and hand out a simple petition for your guests to sign when you are gathered with your family and friends on Thursday.

Click here now to let us know that you're willing to make the people of Darfur part of your Thanksgiving celebration and to download the materials you'll need..

Thanksgiving is a time of year to count our blessings and to reach out to those who are not as fortunate.

That's why we're asking if you would be willing to devote five minutes of your Thanksgiving celebration to helping the people of Darfur.

It's easy. Just spend a few moments explaining the crisis to your guests (we will supply you with a one page overview that you can read from if you're uncomfortable talking off the cuff) and then pass around a printed petition to President Bush and the UN Secretary-General for your guests to sign.

Or just turn on your computer, pull up http://www.SaveDarfur.org/Thanksgiving and let your guests sign the petition online to save the trouble of mailing back the filled in printed petition back to us.

Can we count on you? Click here now to let us know if you're willing to help out the people of Darfur this Thursday.

We'll make sure you have all the information you need to educate your guests and empower them to get involved.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at the Save Darfur Coalition.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,

David Rubinstein
Save Darfur Coalition

P.S. Looking for a meaningful holiday gift?

If so, click here to visit the Save Darfur Coalition's online store to browse our selection of t-shirts, wristbands, and much more. Our merchandise is the perfect way to give a gift to someone you love and help people in need at the same time.

http://www.savedarfur.org

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********************
BLACK by NATURE, PROUD by CHOICE.
Before there was ANY history, there was BLACK history.

BUY BLACK!!!

The genocide in Darfur must end
Thursday, December 07, 2006
By Congressman Elijah Cummings


During Thanksgiving Week this year, visitors to Washington's 15th Street were given a compelling lesson in conscience. Each evening, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum projected images of the continuing tragedy in Sudan onto its walls.

There, from the Museum's exterior facade, illuminated faces filled with suffering and despair stared out into our eyes, attempting to touch our shared humanity.
The museum's purpose in projecting these photographs into our consciousness was clear to draw us away from pleasant reflections about family and friends, forcing us to confront, once again, the escalating genocide in Darfur.

As people of good will everywhere are now painfully aware, the toll that has been inflicted by the government-sponsored campaign of genocide in Darfur is appalling.

At least 400,000 men, women and children have been slaughtered. Two million more have been driven from their villages and into refugee camps. There they linger vulnerable to further attacks and totally reliant upon international aid.

These are the images of suffering that challenge our collective morality from the Holocaust Museum's walls. A plaque there reminds us of a lesson from the Book of Isaiah. We are all God's witnesses in this life. Yet, when we are confronted by an evil as chilling and pervasive as the crimes against humanity that now are being perpetrated in Darfur, our duty cannot be limited to a mere affirmation of the horrors that we have seen. As moral human beings, our only choice is to act. On this, both Democrats and Republicans in Washington agree.

While I was Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, we successfully pressed both the Congress and the Administration to confront the atrocities being inflicted in Darfur by Sudan's "Janjaweed" militias and their Khartoum allies. We achieved a bipartisan policy consensus that the Sudanese actions amounted to genocide.

Yet, two years later, death, displacement and terror continue to plague the non-Arab citizens of Darfur.
Admittedly, we in the U.S. government have found it especially difficult to match the realities of international politics with our collective desire for a more effective policy toward Sudan. Nevertheless, we have taken some concrete steps toward encouraging the Sudanese regime to act more peacefully.

I was proud, for example, to co-sponsor House Resolution 723 that urged the President to appoint a Presidential Special Envoy to Sudan thereby helping to assure that Darfur will remain a top priority for our government. President Bush agreed, and former US AID Director Andrew Natsios has undertaken this challenge with both vigor and skill. On a bipartisan basis, we also enacted the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act H.R. 3127 that became law on Oct. 13.

Rather than penalizing the Sudanese people as a whole, the Act imposes sanctions upon those officials in the Sudanese government whom the President identifies as having personal responsibility for the genocide. The United States and the European Union have been leaders in funding the international peace keeping and humanitarian efforts in Darfur.

Although we were not successful in our effort last June to increase U.S. humanitarian aid, I am hopeful that we will accomplish this goal when the new Congress convenes in January. We were able to increase U.S. funding for the African Union peacekeepers on the ground in Darfur by $50 million.

Even more support is justified. While we continue to work toward the creation of a more substantial international force under UN direction, the African Union Mission in Sudan AMIS is saving lives.

When my CBC colleagues and I met with Special Envoy Andrew Natsios this week, we stressed our commitment to his diplomatic efforts, as well as our continuing sense of urgency. Although the international debate about ending the killing in Sudan is complex, this much is clear.

If the world's major powers (including China and the nations of the Arab League) could agree upon the international community's response to Darfur, we could stop the killing there in short order. Without that international consensus, however, the humanitarian prospects for the people of Darfur will remain grim.
So, our diplomatic challenge is clear. We need to encourage the Chinese (who are major economic allies of the Sudanese regime) to exert influence upon Khartoum to accept a robust and effective UN peacekeeping force.
By now, both the Chinese and our allies in the Arab League should understand the American policy consensus on Darfur. If no international consensus on the specifics of a more effective peace keeping strategy for Darfur is achieved by the first of the year, support in the U.S. Congress for an American response with real military teeth will expand.

Even now, respected Congressional leaders like Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey (along with Africa experts like former Clinton Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice) are making a strong case for U.S. and European military action to coerce the Sudanese Government into accepting a strong U.N. peace keeping force.

If Sudan does not agree, they contend, we should give strong consideration to bombing Sudanese targets (like airfields and command and control centers) that have been linked to the perpetration of the genocide. For all the difficulties and perils that such a policy would entail, it will become increasingly difficult to reject this military option out of hand unless there is real progress toward peace and security in Sudan.

The Administration should make it clear to our international partners that U.S. leaders fully recognize that a peaceful diplomatic and political solution for Sudan is both preferable in the short run and absolutely necessary for Sudan to have a future in the longer term.
Nevertheless, both the Chinese and our allies in the Arab league mustunderstand that the world's tolerance for their support of the central government in Sudan and its policies of terror has a limit.

That limit has been reached. Those are real human people being murdered in Darfur not simply images on a museum wall. We have witnessed and tolerated genocide in Darfur for far too long. Now, we must act. This holocaust must end.

Congressman Elijah E. Cummings represents Maryland's Seventh Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. He is immediate past Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Special (non-european) friend is spending xmas and beyond in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya due to the recent escalation of fighting. I hope they travel safely.
It's humbling to meet people who are doing... not talking.

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"We look forward to working with the Prime Minister and the Government on working out the terms of the compensataion package if that's what his words mean." Michael Mansell, National Aboriginal Alliance

Richardson lobbies for U.N. troops into Darfur
By Evelyn LeopoldWed Feb 7, 7:04 PM ET

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador, called on Wednesday for increased pressure on Sudan to get U.N. troops into turbulent Darfur after he held talks with the new secretary-general.

Richardson, now a Democratic Party presidential candidate, visited Sudan in January where he spoke to President Omar Hassan Bashir and obtained the freedom of an American journalist. He also got a 30-day ceasefire among three rebel groups, although one reneged the following day.

"I believe that President Bashir has in last three months responded somewhat but needs to do considerably more," Richardson told reporters after briefing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "There's got to be somebody constantly on the ground, pushing to get both sides to together, to talk to the rebels."

Sudan has agreed on a three-phased approach, which the United Nations wants to include some 17,000 peacekeepers to supplement the 7,000 African Union troops on the ground.

But al-Bashir has not agreed to the troop number, saying that the AU force was strong enough and the United Nations could give money and logistical support to a "hybrid" operation.

Arab nations, which have not put pressure on Sudan, as well as China, which buys most of Sudan's oil, "must play an important role," Richardson said.

"I think continuous dialogue and negotiation and pressure will move in the right direction," he said.

Ban has sent Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson to Khartoum to help negotiate a ceasefire and peace agreement between the government and rebel groups. But there is no senior U.N. envoy in Khartoum now to negotiate further on troop deployment.

"I think within a year or two President Bashir will realize a U.N. force is needed in Darfur because there're not enough AU troops and the U.N. has the best trained peacekeeping troops," Richardson said.

'RIGHT DIRECTION'

At least 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million uprooted from their homes in Sudan's western region since 2003, when rebels from non-Arab tribes took up arms against Khartoum, accusing it of marginalizing the area.

Militia mobilized by the government to quell the revolt are accused of pillage, rape and murder. Some rebel groups have now committed similar atrocities.

Richardson, who visited North Korea in the 1990s to negotiate the release of missing Americans and returned again in 2005, described himself as a "governor with a foreign policy," adding, "That's a joke."

He said the Bush administration was "moving in the right direction," especially with the appointment of special envoy Andrew Natsios.

At a lunch for journalists, U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff, currently in charge of the U.S. mission, said, "We haven't found yet the levers with Bashir that will allow this hybrid force in."

http://www.savedarfur.org

Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond (Paperback)
by Don Cheadle (Author), John Prendergast (Author)

The authors were interviewed by Tavis on this new book which outlines the tragedy of the genocide as well as steps that we all can take to help. (You can read the transcript or listen to the podcast HERE.

The six steps they outlined on the show were:

Raise awareness of the situation by talking about it.

Write a letter to your Congressperson asking them to intervene.

Raise Funds - have parties, fund raisers, etc.

Call for divestment from companies/groups/organizations still investing with their government.

Join an organization that's already mobilizing to assist

Lobby the government - visit your representative/join a march

This is a horrible crisis ... and it really needs to be stopped.

SaveDarfur.org

********************
BLACK by NATURE, PROUD by CHOICE.
Before there was ANY history, there was BLACK history.

BUY BLACK!!!

It is a shame.

I also cannot help but say that the same carcusiod's who enslaved us are the one's yelling the loudest about this. Why is that? Is this a ploy to invade Sudan for the rich oil deposits that are larger than all of Arabia? Do they really care about the suffering people in Sudan, or do they have another motive?

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

One,

I do believe that the people who are most involved in trying to put an end to this atrocity are indeed sincere in their work. It is a travesty ... and unfortunately, certain White folks get more press and notoriety and because of that are able to bring this situation more publicly into the limelight.

That's not to say that there are Black people protesting this too ... but, certainly, the media isn't going to show it. And the fact is, anything and anybody that can help put an end to the human rights violations happening in Darfur is an effort that I can appreciate.

Where's a good pre-emptive strike when you really need one!

Sudan's President: All Peacekeeping Forces Must Be African

Date: Monday, June 11, 2007
By: Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated Press



KHARTOUM, Sudan - (AP) The new French foreign minister said Sudan's president told him in a meeting Monday that he now fully agreed to a "hybrid" U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 to stop the bloodshed in Darfur but was adamant that all of them must come from Africa.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met Sudanese President al-Bashir for an hour in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to press him to commit to a 23,000-strong joint force for Darfur which the United Nations and western nations have been advocating for many months.

During their closed-door meeting, Kouchner said al-Bashir also brought up Sudan's embattled relations with the U.S., which recently beefed up unilateral sanctions against the regime. Kouchner said he was not convinced sanctions were useful, but the Sudanese "seem clearly affected by this issue, considering how much they raised it."

The hybrid force is the final phase of a three-stage U.N. plan to bolster a poorly equipped and underfunded force of 7,000 AU peacekeepers, which has been unable to end four years of death and destruction in Darfur. Al-Bashir agreed to the package in November, but stalled acceptance of the first two phases and has since backtracked on his approval.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon told reporters he received a letter from al-Bashir a few days ago responding to a revised plan for the hybrid force. He said the U.N., the AU and Sudan were holding talks Monday and Tuesday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the proposal.

In the letter dated June 4, al-Bashir said the relevant departments in his government "are currently busy studying" the proposal for a hybrid force. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.

"I think this is the most positive letter we've had since the beginning of the talks," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Kouchner said al-Bashir insisted that only African soldiers should contribute to the new force, with the U.N. serving as a logistical backer. The U.N. and AU have pledged to seek African troops first, but say they will use non-African troops if necessary.

"Darfur cannot be only an African problem," Kouchner said. "At a certain level, the respect for human rights concerns the whole world."

More than 200,000 people have died in the western Sudanese region of Darfur and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, the janjaweed, that has committed many of the conflict's atrocities -- a charge they deny.

Kouchner, a co-founder of the international aid group Doctors Without Borders who has extensive experience in Sudan, is hoping to use his clout as a former humanitarian activist to boost diplomatic efforts to end Sudan's standoff with the West.

With his trip to Khartoum, France becomes the latest Western nation to try to exert pressure on Sudan's leaders to end the violence in Darfur. France's newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to make Darfur a priority, and his appointment of Kouchner as the country's top diplomat reflects that.

France also plans to host an international conference later this month with European countries and envoys from Egypt, the U.S. and China to help revive the Darfur peace process. A one-year-old peace treaty between the government and one of Darfur's rebel groups has not halted the fighting.

Kouchner said his talks with al-Bashir and other top Sudanese officials, including a former Darfur rebel leader, had helped "lift a certain number of complications" with the Sudanese.

The French minister's talks with al-Bashir appeared unusually cordial, and the two men embraced and joked in front of the cameras at the start of their meeting.

As a humanitarian worker, Kouchner often operated clandestinely in southern Sudan during a separate civil war there, building ties with several former southern rebels who now hold government positions in Khartoum.

"We are very glad to greet you officially in Sudan now," al-Bashir told Kouchner, adding that their relationship went "back a long way."

The U.N. Security Council will be briefed on the outcome of the Addis Ababa talks on Wednesday, a day before council members head to Africa. The trip includes stops in Addis Ababa on Friday and Saturday and Khartoum on Sunday, where additional discussions on the hybrid force are expected.

Commentary: We Don’t Have to Simply Be Saddened About Congo’s Widespread Rapes – We Can Do Something

Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2007
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com


It was enough to send me spiraling into a Thelma and Louise moment.

The New York Times recently wrote about how in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is as much of a national pastime there as baseball is here. The difference being that instead of using a ball or bat as the medium for their recreational release, soldiers and militias there use women and girls instead.

And their sport isn’t filling ballparks. It’s filling hospitals and graveyards.

According to the United Nations, around 27,000 women and girls, and even men and boys, are believed to have been raped in eastern Congo during the past nine years -- a time in which 4 million people were killed during a war topped off by instability and ethnic violence. Right now, United Nations officials say, sexual violence in Congo is the worse in the world.

Tales of that violence sent hot waves of anger washing over me.

There’s the story of five-year-old Uzele who, as documented by Amnesty International, was tending a fire outside her home in March 2004 when she was raped by a combatant of one of the rebel militias that existed then.

There’s the story of 72-year-old Stephanie, who was abducted by a rebel group in 2003 and held for three months.

“Every day, I was raped by up to three men,” she told Amnesty International. “When we tried to refuse, they would beat us. They also pushed wooden sticks into my vagina. Now I have a prolapsed uterus. They treated us all in the same way, whatever our age … ”

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And there are pictures of rows and rows of women in Panzi Hospital, where 10 women and girls show up each day with horrific physical and psychological damage from the rapes. There are the hollow eyes of the girls who are too young to understand what happened to them, much less digest the notion that they will never be able to have children; the women bleeding from rusty nails, stones and bayonets that were plunged into their vaginas as if they were pockets on a pool table.

There are the women who now have to wear a colostomy bag as an accessory.

As I said, it angers me. It angers me that men, men who I assume were born of human women and not demons, could look at a woman, a child even, and inflict that degree of brutality.

It angers me that there are places on this earth where women can be treated that way and have no place to turn for justice. In Congo, the judicial infrastructure is so unstable that rapists are rarely brought to trial. And because even the Congolese government troops also participate in the rapes, there is no assurance that the ones meting out the punishment won’t be more sympathetic to the ones meting out the abuse.

That situation doesn’t sound like one that will lead to justice as much as it sounds like one that will lead to more piling-on.

As I said earlier, reading about the plight of Congo women sent me into a "Thelma and Louise" moment. It made me think about what would happen if the girls and women there were unshackled by the passivity that their culture commands -- a passivity which now has made them more susceptible to become victims than to be prized as valuables -- could find themselves some AK-47s and shoot whoever decides to use their bodies as a medium for a perverted pastime.

Of course I know that would be unrealistic. Yet there is a lot that we can do to help alleviate the suffering of our sisters in Congo.

For starters, we can vow to be angry, rather than depressed, about the problem. We can call our representatives in Congress, especially our black representatives, and urge them push for solutions -- the first of which should be the isolation of Congo.

Until it does something to end the mass rapes, which a colleague of mine calls “gendercide,” that government should be treated like a pariah state.

We can, through our sororities and fraternities and service organizations, as well as our historically black colleges and universities, develop awareness campaigns.

And we can donate money to humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning organization that provides emergency medical care to Congo and other struggling areas of the world. We can also donate money to human rights organizations working in Congo and organizations that support the efforts of women like Marie Pacuriema, a Congo woman who runs an operation that not only helps rape victims rebuild their lives, but empowers them to stand up for themselves as well.

In other words, Pacuriema, who was featured in a Christian Science Monitor article, is showing them that in spite of what’s happened to them, they don’t have to feel helpless.

And neither should we.

ER, thanks for posting this topic. Let's not forget Chad/Sudan crisis and the Congolese crisis which has been going on since the execution of Brother Patrice Lumumba. All for geo-political reasons. Its sad to say that with the exception for a few African Americans that we have become so disconnected from Africans that Europeans and other races are fighting for what we should be fighting for in regards to our own people.
Sometimes because of our religious beliefs we also side with people who have our destruction in their agenda.
Here is a website that was given to me a few weeks ago.
Keith Snow "All Things Pass" website

Sudan's 'Lost Boys' Return Home

article | posted October 23, 2007 (web only)

Jen Marlowe



A Long Way to Go | Three young men who fled South Sudan as boys and grew up in the US return home to reunite with with loved ones, grieve over those who have died, and offer the skills they acquired to help a struggling people. This video was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and The Nation Institute Investigative Fund.



"We don't want to bear any more children because our kids don't survive."

The two women leaned against a large, gnarled tree outside the almost-completed clinic in Akon, South Sudan, repeating the statement several times in different ways to ensure there could be no misunderstanding.

"We'd rather die alone, childless, than bury our children."

I was in South Sudan with three young men--Koor Garang, Garang Mayuol and Gabriel Bol Deng--Sudanese by birth, now US citizens. They had fled their villages in the heart of the Dinka tribal land twenty years ago during the civil war between the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, finding safety in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. They came to the US in 2001 with a group of 3,800 other Southern Sudanese minors who were offered resettlement through multiple agencies, such as the International Rescue Committee and Catholic Charities. As they joined communities across America, they came to be known as "the lost boys of Sudan."

The three young men, accompanied by four "khawajas" (white people), including journalist David Morse and myself, a documentary filmmaker, were returning to their villages for the first time. They hoped to discover the fate of their families, investigate the situation in South Sudan nearly three years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the war, and explore how they could meaningfully contribute to their villages and communities. Gabriel Bol, having completed a bachelor's degree in education at Syracuse University, had been raising money to build a primary school. Koor, undergoing nursing training in Tucson, had collected funds to bring medical supplies to the clinic, as well as hundreds of treated mosquito nets, still the most cost-effective malaria prevention. Garang, who had just received his associate's degree in Wheaton, Illinois, wanted to build water pumps.

David and I had just packed up our recording equipment after a morning interview when Gabriel Bol rushed over to us. Two women had arrived in Akon, accompanying a mother with a week-old newborn and a three-year-old daughter who had been bitten on her foot by a snake. Koor was trying to get access to the boxes of medical supplies he had brought. In the meantime, the women described what had happened. "Seven days ago, when she was outside playing, she went under the tree and put her leg in a hole in the roots. A snake was hiding there--that's how she got bitten. We didn't know what exactly bit her, what kind of snake. At first, her mother thought she had been stabbed by a thorn. But later that night, she began throwing up. The same night, her mother gave birth to a new baby. We left the house last night, as soon as the mother was able and walked all night long to get to Akon. The child's leg is getting worse. It's rotten; there is no flesh--you can only see bone. If there was a closer clinic, she might have been OK. I don't know whether she will live or die. I'm losing hope."

I saw the injury up close minutes later as I filmed Koor examining the wound and giving amoxicillin to the child. I didn't know how Koor was able to administer the care so calmly. I had to restrain a reflex to gag; the smell of gangrene was strong. "Will amoxicillin do anything for an infection this advanced?" I asked. "Not really." Koor answered. "The only real chance this child has is getting the leg amputated." Akon didn't have running water--there hadn't even been saline solution until Koor brought it with us the week before from Nairobi. The nearest hospital that could possibly perform the surgery was in Wau, a six-hour ride over grueling terrain that would be impassable if it rained--and the beginning of the rainy season was upon us. "You need to get the child to Wau," Koor told the mother without any confidence that they had the means to pay for the transportation, much less the surgery.

I didn't ask Koor why he had bothered to give the child amoxicillin, futile as it would be. I understood the need to try to do something--anything. I also understood, without Koor having to tell me, that he would be thinking about this little girl for many late nights to come, plagued by the knowledge that she would likely die, wondering if he could have done more. The guilt at not being able to do enough has been with Koor from the moment we arrived. Every joyous event, like his own homecoming celebration in his clan's village, Mayen Pajok, was punctuated with that guilt. Broad as Koor's smile was as he stepped over a bull into the entrance of his village, he was not only counting the celebrating throngs, in amazement at their euphoria--he was also assessing how inadequate was the number of mosquito nets he had brought.

Gabriel Bol expressed a similar sentiment during the homecoming celebration in his village of Ariang. Children met our car a few miles down the road from the village, with an organized procession of marchers bearing spears and black-and-white, fur-covered shields, young men on bikes, a boy with a bullhorn and a girl with a large drum. Gabriel asked the driver to stop. He got out of the car and walked the remaining miles to his village with the children. "The children had no shoes," Gabriel Bol told me later. "How could I sit in the car and ride when the kids are walking in the sun with no shoes? I had to walk with them."

Gabriel Bol's homecoming was marked with grief as well as guilt. He learned that his parents had died shortly after he fled as a ten-year-old boy. His mother's brother was the last to greet him, after everyone else in the village had presented themselves. "I could be patient, because I knew you came home," his uncle said. "The missing piece of my heart has been filled." Gabriel Bol put his own hand on his uncle's heart as he recounted the story. "I see you and I no longer have to grieve for my sister, your mother. She is alive in you."

Elders had informed Gabriel Bol there was a significant tree in the village, but they would not let him approach it. It had to be a separate occasion, they said, accompanied by its own rituals. He was born on the spot marked by that tree and, adhering to Dinka tradition, his placenta is buried there. His mother is buried there as well. A few evenings later, Gabriel Bol, David and I returned to Ariang. First thing in the morning, the elders led us to the tree. Solemn rituals were performed by the spearmen, but we had to move on quickly to be shown the site that the elders had designated for the school Gabriel Bol was planning to build. I asked Gabriel Bol if it would be possible for us to return to the tree alone later that afternoon. I wanted to film him in a solitary moment there.

Gabriel Bol approached the tree slowly. I lingered behind with the camera focused on him. He knelt down, touching the soil, then sat nestled in the roots with his head in his hands. I came closer, hesitantly. I didn't know if he needed to be left alone or if some comfort and support would be welcomed. He caught my eye. "It's really very emotional," he said. I put my hand on his knee. "Your mother would be so proud of you if she were here right now, seeing everything you are doing," I told him. "She would be so incredibly proud." Gabriel didn't respond. He sat in the roots of the tree that grew out of his placenta and his mother's grave a moment longer, and then straightened up, brushed off his pants and headed to a meeting with the village elders to talk about the school and distribute mosquito nets.

That ability to contain extraordinarily powerful emotions seems to be a Sudanese trait. Garang's homecoming was another example.

We could hear the ululation, singing and drumming as we approached Lang village, a short drive from Akon. The villagers were expecting the return of their lost son and they all turned out. Garang climbed down from the car and was immediately surrounded by a swarm of people who wanted to touch him, hug him, kiss him, confirm he was real. A black cowboy hat with a long feather was ceremoniously placed on Garang's head by one elder, where it perched atop his New York Yankees baseball hat. A yellow-and-green cape with "Play Together" written on it was tied around his neck by another elder. Then, accompanied by singing and dancing and drumming, Garang was led to a small river, which he crossed along with the rest of the villagers and our unique party of returning Sudanese and khawajas. A bull was held down on its back, its legs held straight up, for Garang to step over, followed by the rest of our party, and sacrificed immediately thereafter by a village spearman. Spears were placed on the ground for Garang to step over. Water was poured from a gourd onto his shoes in a purification ritual and an elderly woman spat lovingly in his face.

Garang was solemn and his eyes were red. Several times he wiped them with the corner of his cape, but he never allowed tears to slide down his cheeks. Embraced tightly by elders on either side, he was taken to a tukul (hut), where a woman ran out to greet him in ecstasy. "Jen, this is my mother," he told me.

Garang was led to a seat under a large tree with ample shade to hold court. His mother followed. Garang pulled her, a little woman, onto his lap. She grabbed his face with her hands and, sitting on the lap of the twenty-four-year-old son she hadn't seen since he was five years old, kissed him, laughed, hugged his head tightly, ran the palm of her hand down his face and kissed him again.

Days later, I interviewed Garang and his mother together. I asked Garang's mother if she had seen any changes since the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the peace agreement with Khartoum. "The peace is meaningless," she answered. "If you're trying to cultivate, there's still no rain. We don't have enough cows, we don't have goats. We're still struggling to maintain our home. Even if we can maintain our house, we don't have anything to eat."

Her response stayed with me as we traveled to Kuajok, the regional capital, and later to Juba, seat of the newly formed Government of South Sudan. It was reflected in the questions we asked government officials. Most seemed to empathize with the impatience villagers had expressed when talking about the lack of development the South has experienced since the signing of the CPA. We were reminded, however, of the challenges the new government faced trying to build infrastructure (roads, healthcare, education, every institution of civil society) from scratch after more than twenty years of devastating brutal warfare.

Some, including Pagan Amum, secretary general of the SPLM, remained hopeful about the progress that had been made and what the future held. But, as Amum quickly pointed out, the work had only just begun. There is a vast difference between signing a peace agreement and bringing the development and long-term stability that will actually secure peace. Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin, minister of regional cooperation for the South Sudanese government, was more willing to express his frustration with the Sudanese government in Khartoum, and to connect the dots between South Sudan and war-torn Darfur.

"For any success of peace in Darfur, you must see that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the South is fully implemented. There is a lot of dragging on feet. It makes the Comprehensive Peace Agreement itself very fragile," Dr. Benjamin warned, referring to key provisions of the CPA that were being neglected, such as establishment of the Boundary Commission, which would ascertain the borders between North and South Sudan and the withdrawal of Northern troops from Southern oil fields. Dr. Benjamin continued ominously, foreshadowing the current alarming unraveling of the CPA and the spike of fresh violence in Darfur. "If the peace process in the South collapses, then the country all as a whole goes back to war," he said.

The women we met in Akon--the ones who carried the little girl with the flesh-eating leg wound, didn't need that to be explained by any government official. "Peace was signed, but life has not changed," one of the women told us pointedly. "We're not running to the bush and we're not being shot anymore, but in day-to-day life, it's all still the same." She glanced over to the mother who was breast-feeding her newborn, her sick toddler lying listlessly on a blanket next to her. "I'm scared," she added. "We're worried for our lives."


http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071105/marlowe

Wow!! Those are both really powerful websites/stories! Thanks Yemaya & HB for sharing them!

I have always believe that this was one conflict that we, as African Americans, should have taken the lead on to try to force this Darfur conflict to come to an end a long time ago.

If we really had/have any power, it should be used to pressure this government to end this genocide and the horrible atrocities that are being committed over there. If the U.S. can impose itself on a country such as Iraq for no reason ... certainly it can impose it's military force to stop the types of murders that are happening at the hands of the Sudanese government.

Some of those stories bring me to tears. There are truly crimes against humanity being committed. And that situation really needs to be brought to an end.

Ten Reasons to Suspect "Save Darfur" is a PR Scam

By Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report. Posted November 29, 2007.

As the "Save Darfur" lobby grows in power, here are ten reasons to be more critical about the supposedly humanitarian mission.


The regular manufacture and the constant maintenance of false realities in the service of American empire is a core function of the public relations profession and the corporate news media. Whether it's fake news stories about wonder drugs and how toxic chemicals are good for you, bribed commentators and journalists discoursing on the benefits of No Child Left Behind, Hollywood stars advocating military intervention to save African orphans, or slick propaganda campaigns employing viral marketing techniques to reach out to college students, bloggers, churches and ordinary citizens, it pays to take a close look behind the facade.

Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust U.S.-backed or U.S.-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the "Save Darfur" lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the "Save Darfur" campaign is a PR scam to justify U.S. intervention in Africa.

1. It wouldn't be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war.

Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the U.S. government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant "democracy" in South Vietnam, and the still useful "fight 'em over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here" nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to "get Bin Laden" as revenge for 9/11, as measures to take "the world's most dangerous weapons" from the hands of "the world's most dangerous regimes", as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi "democracy" stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it's still better to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here".

2. It wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed "genocide prevention" as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region.

The 1995 U.S. and NATO military intervention in Kosovo was supposedly a "peacekeeping" operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the U.S. military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the U.S.'s secret prison and torture facilities.

3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?

"The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd," according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. "What's happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it's not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources."

More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term "genocide" to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the "Save Darfur" movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrick Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese "genocide" worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.

4. It's all about Sudanese oil.

Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet's energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners.

5. It's all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.

Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world's supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.

6. It's all about Sudan's strategic location

Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world's easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come.

7. The backers and founders of the "Save Darfur" movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.

According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer:

The "Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country - the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum ...

The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year ...

Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars.

Though the "Save Darfur" PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

8. None of the funds raised by the "Save Darfur Coalition", the flagship of the "Save Darfur Movement" go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act.

9. "Save Darfur" partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur

President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur. Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.

The PR campaign which depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, who are generally despised in the U.S. media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan, is slick, seamless and attractive, and seems to leave no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan's "Arabs", even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and refusing to talk to that government's negotiators is a sure way to avoid any settlement.

10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.

Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback.

Apparently Blackwater doesn't need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.

Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call "ungoverned spaces". Just don't look expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/69170/

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_c...view&id=453&Itemid=1


NOTE: You might want to follow both of the links above and also read the reader response to the article. There are corrections of minor factual errors and an interesting contrast between white reader response and black reader response.