Another Day at the Office

Yet again, we find that Darfur is still the locus of violence and genocide, and yet no one at the UN seems to think it serious enough to warrant calling it genocide or that the Sudanese government was once again responsible for the carnage:

According to several residents of Muhagiriya, a small town in southern Darfur, two columns of uniformed government troops, along with dozens of militiamen not in uniform, surrounded the town around noon on Oct. 8 and stormed the market. Muhagiriya was a stronghold of one of Darfur’s many rebel factions, but witnesses said there were few rebels there at the time and that government forces turned their guns — and knives — on civilians.

Ayoub Jalal, a mechanic, said his father was praying at a mosque when soldiers burst in. “They dragged my father and the others out of the mosque and slashed their throats,” said Mr. Jalal, who was interviewed by telephone.

Both the United Nations and the African Union confirmed that dozens of civilians had been killed and that witnesses consistently identified the attackers as government soldiers and allied gunmen. However, neither entity said it could independently verify who was responsible.

The Sudanese government denied any involvement, but witnesses said uniformed troops methodically mowed down anyone who tried to escape, including a group of fleeing children.

“The youngest child, a 5-year-old boy, I knew well,” said Sultan Marko Niaw, a tribal elder, who also spoke by phone. He said the boy’s name was Guran Avium: “A soldier had shot him in the back.”

Locals are loath to trust the UN because they see it siding with the Sudanese government and its passive/inactive approach just gets more Darfurians killed. The UN thinks that even that approach is far too much, and stonewalled until Darfur was pretty much ethnically cleansed of all opposition.

Those that are left are still under threat of continuing violence, and the UN will take its time in determining who was responsible even as all fingers point towards the Sudanese government.

All the witnesses seem to corroborate each other and the report that the Sudanese militias were involved in the slaughter.

I guess we'll get a shrug and a nod.

Had this been in Iraq and US forces alleged to have been involved, this would be splashed all over the front pages of all papers and media outlets, investigations would be demanded, and heads would roll. The media would have gone out of its way to portray this as a savage slaughter by US forces against hapless and defenseless civilians.

Here? Not so much. After all, it's only Darfurians, and the US can't be directly blamed for the ongoing bloodshed. The UN stands in the way of greater action, especially because Sudan and its foreign backers prevent more strenuous actions against those responsible for the genocide (which the UN continues to refuse to call as such) and ethnic cleansing.