Flying into Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, a few months back on a Lufthansa jet from Frankfurt, I marveled at the strip of fertile land bordering the meandering Blue Nile, as well as the barren bleakness that closely besieged. The fertility initially appeared a mirage; nothing could live in these harsh lands of the Sahel. The checkered green sidings looked like they were being held hostage by the sands, any slight move could be the last.
Such a tenuous grasp in such a harsh land. This exact harshness of nature has created a harshness of man, played out again and again in this unforgiving theater of Saharan life, through countless conflicts and strife.
A raging fire, once it starts and grows, requires no more spark, no more flint. It self sustains in its expansion, and will take a mighty dose of water, or a simple exaustion of fuel, for it to die out. And in the Sudan, according to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, the only reason for the flickering of the flame of violence in the Sudan, is that "there are fewer villages to burn and loot, less civilians to terrorize and kill.”
This country, this entire region, in fact, has seen nothing but violence and struggle in its modern history. There is no placidity to harken back to, no peace to reclaim; it has simply not been a reality since the existence of the modern Sudanese state.
Despite the Facebook appeals, the rallies in Washington D.C., Steven Spielberg quitting the Beijing Olympics, and world awareness on an unprecedented level, the violence and slaughter of innocents simply continues. The people perpetrating the crimes remain untouched by both the voices of the oppressed and the voices of the outspoken global citizens. This is a simple case of bark without bite, and the criminals running the regime in Khartoum are crafty; they are fully aware that they run no risk of punitive action; the world's bodies, though fully given to the lofty retoric of the shiny offices they hold, are less than fully inclined to actually do something about the situation.
“The entire Darfur region is a crime scene,” Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told the (Security) Council, saying the government of Sudan had been bombing schools, markets and water installations, some as recently as May. He said 100,000 people had been displaced so far this year.
A common theme I see tying all of the global conflicts together on one long macabre string is this: it is so much easier to destroy than to create; it takes but a tiny spark to ignite a raging conflict; but it takes more than the world can seem to muster to douse these flames of conflict. History should be the first lesson for the men and women charged with action on these horrific crimes being perpetrated by the Sudanese government; without a sense of where we have fallen short in the past, it will be impossible to mark the starting line in the Sudan. According to Bruno Stagno Ugarte, Costa Rica’s foreign minister, “the ghosts of Srebrenica and Rwanda should awaken us to the fact that some in Sudan believe that the graves in Darfur are not sufficiently full.”
