Janjaweed

SECRETARY of State Colin Powell has demonstrated personal courage in calling genocide by its name in Darfur, Sudan, by the Sudanese government and its state-sponsored militia, the Janjaweed, against non-Arab Africans. The Bush administration has it in its power to show similar courage by doing something about this tragedy. Don't just call for sanctions on Sudanese goods. That will not end the genocide. Send in our C-130 cargo planes with food, water and, if need be, peacekeeping troops.

There were no smiles, no blessings at the birth of the light-skinned girl with the ebony eyes and curly black hair. Not a glimpse of joy. For a family still bleeding from war, the baby was like salt on their wounds. "My father didn't speak for the entire day," recalled the baby's mother, Suad Abdalaziz, 28, her voice cracking and her face streaming with tears. "He was not angry at me. He was angry at the Janjaweed and the government for giving me this baby. " In the troubled province of Darfur, pro-government Arab militias called Janjaweed have raped countless black African women in a campaign that the Bush administration has called genocide.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell issued a blunt warning yesterday to the Sudanese government, saying it had days to stop atrocities by Arab militias in the Darfur region or it would face punishment by the international community. The United States began circulating a draft of a U.N. resolution to bring an arms embargo and other sanctions against senior leaders of the militias, known as the janjaweed. Those measures could be extended to Sudanese government officials. "The janjaweed must be controlled," Powell told reporters in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

For a man the United States accuses of war crimes, Sheikh Musa Hilal got a surprisingly rousing welcome when he visited the Sudanese hinterland in northern Darfur province this week. Tall and white-turbaned, Hilal stepped off a camouflage-green Sudanese military helicopter and pointed his cane to the heavens before wading through a colorful sea of dancing women and white-robed elders who shouted, "Allahu akbar" - "God is great. " It was only after the Arab Sudanese leader had vanished into the throngs, flanked by armed soldiers and government security agents, that Ibrahim, a short, middle-aged black African from the Fur tribe, felt free to speak his mind.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared for the first time yesterday that the wave of atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region constituted genocide, a finding the Bush administration hopes will increase world pressure on Sudan's rulers to end the crisis. Powell, speaking to a Senate committee, said Sudan's government was complicit in the brutal campaign of racial eradication carried out by Arab militias known as the Janjaweed against black non-Arabs in Darfur. After reviewing a report by teams of investigators, "we concluded - I concluded - that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility, and that genocide may still be occurring," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Shrapnel holes pock this battered village's green and white mosque. Its black, non-Arab residents practiced Islam for generations, but in the eyes of their Arab attackers, they weren't true Muslims. Islam once was the glue that held things together in Sudan's western Darfur region, but black African Muslims now talk of desecration of mosques, burning of Korans, and murders of religious leaders. Human-rights groups and diplomats say the attacks on black Muslims by pro-government Arab militias called Janjaweed add weight to allegations that genocide is occurring in Darfur.

The war in Sudan's Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in what the Bush administration calls a genocide, is growing deadlier and more complicated. Since the beginning of the year, militias backed by the Sudanese government are crossing over almost daily into neighboring Chad and freely attacking Darfur refugees and Chadian civilians in villages along the lengthy, desolate border. Making matters worse, about 8,000 Chadian rebels have set up camp in Darfur.

An intensive U.S. government-funded study has confirmed widespread atrocities against Africans in the Darfur region of Sudan, including mass rape and summary executions of male villagers, the study's director and senior Bush administration officials said yesterday. The report does not explicitly address the question of whether genocide is occurring, those familiar with it say. But it increases the pressure on Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as he weighs a determination of genocide.

Nearly one ton of food, clothing and medical supplies - much of it collected locally, and destined for Darfurian Sudanese living hand-to-mouth as war refugees in Chad - will wing its way to Africa this weekend thanks to the Philadelphia-based Darfur Human Rights Organization of the United States and its supporters. The shipment, valued at about $50,000, according to the group's president, Abdelgabr Adam, includes more than 2,500 pairs of shoes and flip-flops, 400 one-piece outfits for infants, sun hats, soccer balls, and pediatric vitamin supplements to be distributed at the Iridimi refugee camp, home to 40,000 of the estimated 2.5 million Africans displaced by government-affiliated Arab militias.

Capt. Brian Steidle, USMC, trained to shoot guns, not pictures. But in the killing fields of Darfur, the American soldier-turned-African Union observer found that a camera was his most effective weapon. During 2004, Steidle photographed the carnage wrought by Sudanese Arab militias, or "Janjaweed" ("devil on horseback"), against the mostly black villagers in the Darfur region. Over 200,000 civilians have been killed and millions more displaced. Steidle accumulated conclusive evidence of genocide.

Nearly one ton of food, clothing and medical supplies - much of it collected locally, and destined for Darfurian Sudanese living hand-to-mouth as war refugees in Chad - will wing its way to Africa this weekend thanks to the Philadelphia-based Darfur Human Rights Organization of the United States and its supporters. The shipment, valued at about $50,000, according to the group's president, Abdelgabr Adam, includes more than 2,500 pairs of shoes and flip-flops, 400 one-piece outfits for infants, sun hats, soccer balls, and pediatric vitamin supplements to be distributed at the Iridimi refugee camp, home to 40,000 of the estimated 2.5 million Africans displaced by government-affiliated Arab militias.

Capt. Brian Steidle, USMC, trained to shoot guns, not pictures. But in the killing fields of Darfur, the American soldier-turned-African Union observer found that a camera was his most effective weapon. During 2004, Steidle photographed the carnage wrought by Sudanese Arab militias, or "Janjaweed" ("devil on horseback"), against the mostly black villagers in the Darfur region. Over 200,000 civilians have been killed and millions more displaced. Steidle accumulated conclusive evidence of genocide.

IN INTERVIEWS for their new movie, "Ocean's Thirteen," Don Cheadle and George Clooney are always sure to include information on the worsening crisis in Darfur. We in Hollywood, along with hundreds of student, religious and human-rights organizations, many headed by the group Savedarfur, are still speaking out. After Sudan's President Al-Bashir made a "deal" last month to let U.N. and African Union peacekeeping forces into the war-torn region, some people have asked why we're all still so concerned.

Since President Bush announced a new round of sanctions against Sudan, the administration has been bombarded with criticism. The standard view has been that the sanctions are too little, too late against a government accused of slaughtering its own people. However, this criticism points fingers in the wrong direction. The U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide calls for governments and other actors committing genocide to be punished. In pursuit of that obligation, the United Nations has approved several measures to sanction Sudan for its involvement in genocide in Darfur, but to date, the United States appears to be the only country actually implementing sanctions.

It began, as so many momentous occasions do, with a massage. A few months ago, agent Steve Kauffman was getting the kinks worked out when his masseuse - yes, she's also an actress - mentioned the rapidly deteriorating situation in Sudan. The murders of thousands of citizens by the country's own government in the Darfur region had been going on for years, but like most Americans, Kauffman didn't know much about it. "But I said to myself, 'Holy Whatever,' " Kauffman recalled by telephone Friday.

A "people's tribunal" of human-rights activists, international lawyers, and a well-known Nobel laureate met in the shadow of the United Nations yesterday for a mock trial in which a former Darfurian now living in Northeast Philadelphia testified of atrocities and Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir was pronounced guilty of genocide. Since 2003, Sudan's western province of Darfur has been the scene of wholesale slaughter and displacement, in which millions of Darfurians of African heritage have been killed or driven from their homes by Arab-descended Janjaweed militias and armies loyal to Bashir.

I just returned from rebel-held areas of Darfur on a trip with Scott Pelley of CBS's 60 Minutes, and I found that the crisis is spiraling out of control: Violence is increasing, malnutrition is soaring, and access to life-saving aid is shrinking. The Bush administration has made some noise about Darfur over the last two years, but it has made a series of deadly mistakes that have served only to make matters worse. The administration's first deadly mistake is that while it helped broker a peace agreement in May, its negotiator left after only one rebel group signed, leaving at least two other rebel groups wanting more detail in the deal.

Saying the Darfur peace agreement was in danger, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.) has called on the Bush administration to appoint a special envoy to mediate among warring factions in the region. Smith, the third-ranking member of the House International Relations Committee, said the administration had shifted its focus from Darfur as problems cascaded in Lebanon and other hot spots. "This is a matter of the utmost urgency," he said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "We believe we are at a crucial time where effective action needs to be taken.

A peace pact agreed to in May by the Sudanese government and a main rebel group offered hope for ending the three-year-old genocide in Sudan's western region of Darfur. How quickly hope dies. The pact is being buried under rising violence in the African nations of Sudan and Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Darfur refugees languish. Since 2003, attacks by fighters known as the Janjaweed have killed an estimated 200,000 civilians and displaced three million within Sudan and in neighboring Chad.