Darfur

I'm bringing the War Nerd back for some insight into the war in Sudan:

This time it's Darfur, in Western Sudan--yup, that's right, a whole new front in the multi-war hell-on-Earth that goes by the name of "Sudan." Whenever there's a competition for worst place in the world, Sudan always makes the top five. It's got pretty much everything going for it, hellhole-wise. It's in Africa, and worse yet, the Sahel, where things are bad and getting worse even by African standards. It's an ex-British colony. It's connected at the top to the Middle East, and at the bottom to the Rift Valley, where there's always a massacre or two going. It's got the classic North/South, Muslim/Christian divide, and a mixed-up kind of racial divide, Arab/Black, to top that off.

...

So where does a bunch of mostly-black Northern Sudanese river-rats get off acting superior to the noble Dinka? I don't know, but they do. And with a lot of cash help from those Wahabbi morons in Saudi Arabia, who fund the whole miserable war, they're winning. The Northerners already starved and bombed the Dinka into surrender, and they're using the same tactics on the Fur right now.

It's an ugly way to make war. Basically it consists of putting a whole province under siege. Here it is in nice easy steps:

1. Arm the nomad militias so they outgun the farmers. The Sudan government sent 50,000 automatic rifles and machine guns to the Arab militias in Darfur. Also provide them with Army advisors and air support, and force them into effective cross-tribal alliances.

2. Block off entry for the foreign aid agencies, so nobody'll see what's about to happen. This is something the Sudan government has learned to do REAL well. They managed to almost wipe out the Dinka without a word from our democracy-loving government.It helps that southern and western Sudan are so hard to reach. Like I've said before, inland peoples are out of luck. Ask the Kurds.

3. Send the nomad militias in to burn the villages. Tell them they can have whatever they can grab, and rape anybody they happen to like the look of. Tell them to be sure to burn the village real thoroughly, so nobody can live there again. (Lots of Fur villages have been burned two, three, four times.)

4. Once the Fur are pushed off their land, squeeze them into concentration camps, with the militias coming in to rape and kill the inmates every few hours, just to keep them scared.

5. Keep all food away from them. This is the key technique. It's not an "atrocity" or an "excess," it's the whole point. Read up on ancient warfare if you need to see how sieges work. Even if you don't wipe out the whole tribe, you'll have killed or stunted the children, so you're changing the balance in your favor in the next round of fighting.

We're already well into stage 5 in Darfur now. The nomad militias, united in a government-sponsored organization called the Janjaweed (which isn't nearly as fun or Rastafarian as it sounds) now have 20,000 men with automatics, RPGs, and CAS from the Sudan air force. Not bad for a camel-mounted mobile rape squad.

The Fur are dying in big numbers, and run off their land in even bigger. Right now maybe 800,000 of them are on the run, stumbling around the desert or hunkered down in concentration camps hoping the Janjaweed cowboys don't feel like coming inside the wire for a little rapin' and killin' tonight.

You know, somehow I can't enjoy this one as much as I do most African wars. I guess I made the fatal mistake of rooting for the underdog here--the blacks, the Fur, the tall skinny folks. You think I'd know better. In the movies the underdog always wins. In Africa--never.

Once again people are getting massacred while the UN sheds a few crocodile tears. How Kofi Annan sleeps at night I'll never know.