Genocide: History Repeats Itself In The Darfur Region Of Sudan
Once again history is repeating itself. This time it is the Darfur region of western Sudan. Twenty years ago 300,000 people were killed and many others were displaced when armed militias targeted ethnic African tribes: murdering, raping, burning, and stealing without punishment. The guilty parties are Arab raiders called the Janjaweed. They were the “devils on horseback” then; now they are still “devils”, but they ride in trucks. Sudan’s former president, Omar al-Bashir and his allies have never been brought to justice for their responsibility in the atrocities. And today in 2023, the conflict is occurring once again.
The world has a tendency to forget genocides, partly because they are so horrible. The most horrible example in recent history was the Holocaust, the murder of six million European Jews by Nazi Germany that led to World War II. There is fear that this genocide will lead to all -out war and could even draw in sympathizers from other nations. Truce agreements so far have failed to end the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The conflict is now taking place in the already distraught western region of Darfur blighted by decades of genocide.
There are two generals vying for power: Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the army and Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan of the paramilitary forces. Other factors contributing to the lawlessness and hopelessness of the situation is the departure of the U.N. peacekeepers. The fighting reached the Darfur in April when the rival forces engaged in mass killings of civilian, looting food warehouses, and attacking aid workers. Fleur Pialoux, a project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said, the warring parties in Darfur “will stop at nothing until they run out of ammunition or bodies to kill.” In the meantime, communities have been burned to the ground in a scorched earth policy, civilians young and old have been raped and murdered, cease-fire talks that had been going on in Saudi Arabia failed, and the region sees no end in sight.
