the extintion of darfur

7/30/2019 The Extintion of Darfur

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Jordan Davis

Andrew Watson

ENGL 2030-SECTION 006

November 26, 2008

The Extinction of Darfur

I remember that I had been feeling tense all over, as if my body were trying to

tell me something. I could not sleep. It was a dark night, with no moon to reflect off the

standing water that pooled beside out huts. My parents and other adults were sleeping

outside so that the children and elderly could all be inside. [] My brothers and sisters

and I, as well as about a dozen refugees from other villages in southern Sudan, stretched

out on the ground inside the hut [] All was silent except for the whine of the occasional

mosquito [] Silence it must have been around 2 a.m. Silence. Then, a whistle. It started

low and soft at first, then grew louder as it came closer. Next came a sound like the

cracking of some giant limb in the forest. Again, the same sound, louder and in short

bursts. I wondered if I were dreaming. As deafening explosions made the village beneath

me and hysterical voices penetrated the walls of the hut, I realized what was happening.

My village was being shelled.

I sprang up, fully awake. In my panic, I tried to run, but the huts interior was so

impenetrably black I slammed headfirst into something hard. I could not even see the

outline of the door. But I could hear voices of my brothers and sisters, loud and crying as

shells began exploding, [] My whole being focused on a single thought of finding the

door. [] Suddenly, I felt a hint of a breeze. [] I found myself on top of somebody, but

I could see the doors faint outline. I crawled through the two layers of grass that formed


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the door of the hut and emerged into the outside world. I stared to run but did no know

where to go. Suddenly, my father ran from left to right in front of me. I pivoted and

followed him. He ran between huts, and I tried to catch him, but, after a hundred yards he

halted and knelt, disappearing into the grass [] As I started to pass him in the darkness,

my father reached up, grabbed my shoulder and pulled me down beside him. Within

seconds a line of shadowy forms, carrying atomic rifles ran along the path toward the hut

I had just left.

We moved through the muck, smearing our knees and hands, until we reached the

sanctuary of the forest. The light grew. I heard more gunshots and more crying. [] I had

wondered what happened to my mother and siblings. I had just turned 13. I had no food

or water and I was naked. My village had been destroyed. [] Armed men who spoke a

foreign tongue combed the forest and grasslands, and if they found me, they most likely

would kill me. The only good thing I could imagine was that I might be safe for a awhile.

It was then I realized the man who satbeside me was not my father (Dau 1-5).

This is the story of a young Sudanese boy named John Bul Dau, one of many lost

boys of Sudan. At the age of 13, his village was one of many attacks on the Sudanese

people from their government, due to an ongoing civil war in Sudan. After reading this

story and hearing many others, Darfur has been on my mind and hasnt left since. Now

the violence has spread to a small region in Sudan called Darfur. Since 2003, the

violence of the Sudanese government against many African tribes has heightened

resulting in over 400,000 men, women and children being murdered and 2.2 million

being displaced from there homes. Now many civilians have either fled to Chad or are


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seeking refuge in camps on the border of Sudan, but many are still being killed today.

This is the genocide of the 21stcentury; this is the extermination of Darfur.

Few international issues have been as controversial and have caught the attention

of the American people, including myself, as much as the genocide in Darfur. In 2004

the United States Congress passed a resolution labeling Darfur a genocide. Using peace

treaties, the United has tried to help bring an end to the war in Sudan, but has failed

resulting in more violence. Despite the Genocide Convention created in the aftermath of

the Holocaust, the United States promise to protect people from genocide has proven

ineffective and weak. Now more than ever, the United States needs to keep there promise

and help the people of Darfur as many are being raped, tortured and enslaved as boy

soldiers. That is why I feel that it is morally impressible for the United States not to enter

Darfur in order to stop genocide. It is also the duty of people around the world to push

there governments to intervene in the war.

To better understand why it is so important for the U.S. to help the people of

Darfur, one must understand the history of genocide and what genocide really is. The

word geno comes from the Greek word people and cide from Latin meaning to

kill. In order for something to be called genocide it must follow strict criteria. Genocide

is defined as ethnic cleansing meaning the killing or displacing of a single ethnic group.

The African tribes in Darfur are experiencing this very thing as their villages are being

burned, livestock and people killed, and others forced to run for their lives.

Darfur is made up of 36 main tribes and 110 different languages. Arab tribes in

Darfur make up 40 percent of the population. Due to such a wide range of people, Darfur

is infested with tribal conflicts which have sparked war everywhere. The crisis in Sudan


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has grown out of several separate conflicts. The first is the civil war between the Islamist,

Khartoum-based national government and two separate rebel groups based in Darfur: the

Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice of Equality Movement. The Rebels angered by

Darfurspolitical and economic influence by Khartoum, first appeared in February 2003.

The government, however, did not launch a major counteroffensive until April of 3003,

after rebels attacked a military airfield, destroying several aircraft and kidnapping an air

force general in the process. Khartoum responded by arming irregular forces and

directing them to eradicate the rebellion, but the mass violence on civilians is what

followed.

The genocide in Darfur is also related to a second conflict in Darfur. In southern

Sudan, civil war has been going on for several decades between the northern, Arab-

dominated government and the Christian and animist black southerners. They have been

fighting in one from or another which has been going on since the countrys

independence from the United Kingdom in 1956 and has cost over two million lives since

1983 alone. After the United States labeled Darfur as a genocide, they tried to be the

translator between all sides involved by having all sides sign a peace treaty, but this too

failed and now there are over ten different groups involved and the civilians are the ones

who are suffering. Many think that this conflict is a clash between Arab and non- Arab

ethnicities residing in Darfur. However, the conflict is rooted in the manipulation of the

latent and overt ethinic tensions by both the Sudanese government and rebel movements

in order to polarize the residents of Darfur.

Now there are over ten different parties fighting in Darfur. The parties targeting

innocent civilians are; Sudanese Security forces who are hired by the Sudanese


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government to bomb villages and kill civilians, Janjaweed Militias, Arabs on horseback

supported by the government to kill non-Arab tribes, Sudanese Liberation Army, assist

Janjaweed by giving them air support and the Government of Chad who launches aerial

attacks of villages on the Darfur-Chad border. The people fighting the government of

Sudan are the Sudanese Liberation Army, who has tried to help with negotiations, Justice

of Equality (JEM) who attack oil fields and help protect civilians and many other rebel

groups have been formed from people who have survived village attacks.

This might be many peoples first time hearing about genocide, but genocide has

been repeated throughout history and continues to repeat it self. That is why I want to

know, when people will learn from history, to change history. Although the word

genocide hasnt always been used to describe such situations, genocide has existed for

many years. Examples of past genocides can date back to 1915, were over one million

people in Armenia were killed, Cambodia in 1975, where two million where killed, 1992

Bosnia, two million killed, 1994 Rwanda where 800,000 were killed, and people have

even said that the killing of many Native Americans can and should be considered

genocide.

The biggest case of genocide the Holocaust, where 6,000,000 Jews and 5,000,000

Polish and Romanians were murdered is something that many people studied and will

study throughout school. I have watched movies and ask questions of why no one did

anything to help until it was too late? Although there is a big difference between 400,000

people killed in Darfur and 11,000,000 in the Holocaust, the genocide in Darfur isnt

over. What number will the death toll have to reach, until the United States has done

something about it?


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