The Dark Continent gets darker with Darfur...

Just a background for the one’s who are unaware...

Sudan has been a battleground for different ethnic groups, warlords and the government militia for quite a long time. Darfur, which is in the western part of Sudan caught media attention from 2003 when the President Omar Al-Bashir and his military started targeting non Arabic ethnic groups with in the country.

400,000 people were suspected to be killed in Darfur alone because of genocide, malnutrition, epidemics and other illness. Peace keeping forces and humanitarians across the globe has been screaming for help for the last 4 years. “Surprisingly” or “Interestingly” I don’t see any action apart from non profit organizations who take all the risks to go to Kenya and Chad to help the refugees.

I can’t comment on the situation in Sudan as an insider, but it is hard to disregard what is happening to the world. As an outsider who relies on the information from the media, I still couldn’t believe why the world had to wait for 4 years to act? Didn’t we make the same mistake in Rwanda and Cambodia?

As we all know UN is not capable of taking any actions unless the permanent members support. We can still blame Russia and China for providing arms to Al-Bashir and think about what could be the reason for such an act? Is it because of the money in the arms trade or another attempt to rule and exploit an Oil rich country? US is not in a position to get into the real issues demanding attention, as it has to fight its own wars in multiple fronts within the country and outside the country including a worsening economy and a much debated war on Iraq.

This is one of the instances where UN should show its true soul and help the deprived poor nations. These people are impoverished not in terms of money, which is their least of the concerns. They lack primary healthcare, housing, water, and food. We can see Neanderthal era where people live in caves, use trees for shade, and walks miles on desert to get water from only available fresh water source. We are sure that diplomacy and International criminal court is not helping to bring Al-Bashir to the justice. Are we waiting for more proof on genocide and bring up the death count to another 100,000 more? Doctors and humanitarians cannot visit Darfur now because of Visa denials and kidnapping of aid workers. Doesn’t that show enough proof that the self proclaimed president doesn’t care about UN Security Council or the ICC. (International criminal court)

May be after all these years, we still try to live in a world of oblivion where Africa doesn’t exists. World needs all the exotics from this continent and when it comes to helping them, no country is interested. May be a nation has to be a nuclear power to catch some attention in this time or has to make huge investments in US or European markets to prove that they are important to the rich man’s economy.

I am heartbroken to see that even the sparkling diamonds are not stopping this continent on its way to a much darker one.