As many as 300,000 people may be at risk of imminent death. The Janjaweed have carried out ghastly atrocities, shooting men and boys, gang-raping women and girls in front of their families, poisoning wells by dropping the bodies of dead children into them and burning and pillaging entire villages. A United Nations report calls it a "reign of terror." UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described it as "ethnic cleansing." The U.S., which, under the Bush administration, has done more than any other nation to try to stop the slaughter, calls it genocide. The few journalists who have made it into Darfur despite the efforts of Sudan's dictatorial government to keep them out -- among them the Globe's Stephanie Nolen -- have described what is going on in this African nation as another Rwanda. Even before these latest outrages, the Sudanese government, one of the world's most repressive regimes, was notorious. It harboured terrorists in the 1990s, including al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, sanctioned trading in slaves and warred against Christian rebels in the south during a 21-year conflict that was only recently brought to an end with the help of the U.S. The human rights atrocities that Sudan has already carried out, or allowed the Janjaweed to carry out on its behalf, easily surpass what prompted then U.S. president Bill Clinton and NATO to bomb Yugoslavia for 11 weeks in the spring of 1999. That to stop what Clinton described at the time as then president Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians. Milosevic is now on trial in the Hague for war crimes. But no one is talking about bombing Sudan or prosecuting its leaders. Instead, the UN Security Council last month passed a watered-down resolution giving Sudan until Aug. 30 to rein in the Janjaweed and allow relief agencies to bring in supplies to Darfur. The resolution only passed after the U.S. was forced to drop an explicit threat of sanctions if Sudan failed to comply. Human rights disaster Why? Countries which import oil from Sudan or have investments there, including China and several European nations, worry about being negatively affected if sanctions are imposed. While the U.S. has been pressuring Egypt to work with the 22-nation Arab League, of which Sudan is a member, to end the ongoing human rights disaster in Darfur, the Arab League last week came up with an even more watered-down peace plan. It rejected sanctions or any "forced foreign military intervention." Earlier, it called on the two main rebel groups in Darfur to drop their demand that the deadly Janjaweed be disarmed. A few nations are helping. The African Union has offered 300 troops; Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Botswana are talking about sending in a combined military force of 3,000; France has overcome its initial concern about offending Sudan and is now helping refugees arriving in nearby Chad through its military base there, while the Netherlands is assisting with relief efforts. Still, the mayhem in Darfur continues. Can you imagine the reaction of the UN and the Arab League if Israel was treating the Palestinians this way, instead of this being another case of Muslims killing and repressing other Muslims? Remember how nuts they all went a few weeks back about Israel's security fence, which, while it does intrude into Palestinian territory and will eventually have to be moved to provide for a Palestinian state, was mainly intended to stop Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel? Finally, if you're wondering why you always hear so much criticism in the media about Israel and so little about Sudan, well, there's that old selective morality at work, yet again. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd love to hear from you. Phone: (416) 947-2212 Fax: (416) 947-3228 he can be reached by e-mail at: lorrie.goldstein@tor.sunpub.com Letters to the editor should be sent to: editor@tor.sunpub.com Home Page