The Dafur Tragedy Continues

The world has forgotten the victims of genocide again. More than Fifty years after the horror of the Shoa, which provoked the cry heard round the world "never again!", refugees of the latest unchallenged genocide crowd in camps. Catholic News Service has this STORY: "Darfur's 2 million refugees languish in camps over security issues" At the heart of the article is the great irony that is the Sudanese Government:

The United Nations says at least 180,000 have been killed in the conflict in Darfur. Some 2 million residents of Darfur have been chased from their homes in a scorched-earth campaign that many have characterized as genocide.

International officials in Sudan report that, in an effort to get people out of the overcrowded camps, the government is paying families and providing transportation so that they may return to their villages. Yet many of the villages are nothing but ashes following two years of attacks by Arab militias aligned with government troops.

The government pays some refugees to go home? After allying with the very Arab militias that made these poor people refugees? What? Are they still trying to finish the job?

Bjorg Mide, director of ACT/Caritas Darfur Emergency Response, observes the obvious:

"The international community would like people to go home," Mide told Catholic News Service.

"If you really want the displaced to live a life of dignity, you don't want them to remain in the camps, where all they have is the bare minimum," he said. "By the end of the current rainy season we're going to have a lot of sick people, especially children with respiratory diseases. People need to go home to start rebuilding their lives. But they can't go home without security.

"The displaced need complete information beforehand, and they must be given the choice of whether they're going to return or not," said Mide. "We understand that the government wants people to go back home and rebuild their lives, and we appreciate that it is providing money and support, but the displaced are going back to nothing."

If Khartoum is serious about resettling refugees, It had better do more than provide more than just "money and support". It had better deploy the army to completely expel any militias from the afflicted areas. African Troops serving as peacekeeper can act as international observers of this campaign. Next, they had better fully revitalize the areas that the militias razed to the ground. In fact, the government had better improve the conditions of those villages so that refugees have an incentive to leave camps. Finally, Khartoum must accept the presence of international observers; periodic human rights inspections throughout the Darfur region by the International Red Cross/Red Cresent, UN human rights agencies and others; as well as continued African Union and UN peacekeepers (preferably ones that won't rape 14-year-old girls). Nothing less than a radical change of policy will convince anyone, least of all the refugees, that Sudan has ended the genocide that it began.