Follow the extended link for an essay about the Darfur region of Sudan and the march on May 1 in Chicago. The essay is by Larry Greenfield, Executive Minister of the ABC-MC.
I attended seminary with a priest from Sudan. We occasionally exchange e-mails. Father Abraham's stories are no less harrowing than the ones communicated in the essay. I hope you will take a moment and read.
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"Hired Hands"
Darfur, that troubled region in eastern Sudan, can – depending on what happens in the next few days and weeks – go either way, with cascading consequences.
Nicholas Kristof, who recently received the Pulitzer Prize for his columns on the Darfur genocide in The New York Times, summed the state of things this way in a February article in The New York Review of Books ("Genocide in Slow Motion," 2/9/06):
As a result of this collective failure [virtually the world community’s unwillingness to intervene, as Kristof has earlier described it], the situation in the region has been getting much worse since about September 2005. The African Union has lost some of the first troops it stationed there, and a growing portion of Darfur is become too dangerous as a place to distribute food, and the rebels [the victims in the conflict] have been collapsing into fratricide. The UN has estimated that if Darfur collapses completely then the death toll there will reach 100,000 per month. Just as worrying, the instability in Darfur has crossed over into neighboring Chad. There is a real possibility that civil war will again break out there in the next year or two, and that could be a cataclysm that would dwarf Darfur.
But how?
Kristof contends the conflict "could probably be resolved."
The rebels aren’t going for broke, after all. They don’t seek independence, but just more autonomy and a bigger portion of Sudan’s resources.
And it isn’t as if we bereft of answers on how to deal with the Sudanese government, even if they are having the paramilitary Janjaweed do its dirty work of stamping out not just the rebels but the tribal populations as well. The government, we know, will only respond to an actual show of force.
Since the relatively small deployment of African Union soldiers isn’t up to that requirement, Kristof and others propose that the United Nations be the occupying force, with the "blue hats" worn by a combination of African Union, NATO, and UN troops. The US, evidently, cannot be a part of the forces on the ground, but it could enforce a no-fly zone and, equally if not more importantly, it could employ the likes of a Colin Powell to twist arms to get the parties to conferences composed of the government and tribal leaders.
* * * * *
But, of course, we aren’t accustomed to initiate such actions before genocidal tragedies occur – which is already evident in what we have allowed to happen up to this point in Darfur.
The pattern is pretty well established: we sit back, stay silent, and remain inactive while the pot is beginning to boil and then typically say two things after the carnage. First, we express our sorrow that the genocide has occurred. And then we say, "Never again."
But it does happen again…and again…and again.
That’s the story of the Armenian genocide in 1915; the Jewish genocide in the 1940s; the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s; the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides of the 1990s.
Just wait, we’ll use the same language about Sudan and the coming civil war in Chad.
* * * * *
Jesus, according to John’s Gospel (chapter 10, verses 11 - 15, describes himself as the model or noble or good shepherd. And he explains exactly what he means. It is the kind of shepherd "lays down his life for the sheep."
That, for Jesus, is in contrast with the "hired hand," who is not the shepherd, who only works for pay, and who has no real concern for the sheep.
So, when the wolf comes to the flock, the shepherd stays and struggles to save the sheep.
But the hired hand "catches sight of the wolf coming, and runs away, leaving the sheep to be snatched and scattered by the wolf." (verse 12)
* * * * *
The wolf in Sudan is already among the sheep, snatching them and scattering them.
The Janjaweed uses every brutal tool at their disposal, mass slaughter and mass rape the most prominent among them.
Kristof repeats a quote from one of the books he is reviewing in the article (A Short History of a Long War, by Julie Flint and Alex de Wall, Zed Books, 2006). It is the words of a young man who survived an attack by hiding under a mule:
[The attackers] took a knife and cut my mother’s throat and threw her into the well. Then they took by oldest sister and began to rape her, one by one. My father was kneeling, crying and begging them for mercy. After that they killed my brother and finally my father. They threw all of the bodies in the well.
…rape and killings are not just a one-time event when the Janjaweed attack and burn villages. Two million people have fled the villages, and most have taken refuge in shantytown camps on the edge of cities. The Janjaweek surround the camps and routinely attack people when they go outside to gather firewood or plant vegetables. In order to survive the victims must get firewood; but each time they do so they risk being raped or killed.
* * * * *
Will we be shepherds?
Or the hired hands?
What we as American citizens demand –visibly, vocally – of our government in the next few days and weeks will determine which role we will play.
Posted by tripp at April 29, 2006 07:02 AM