Eye On America | Darfur and Kosovo: A racial hypocrisy

Ross Weingarten Opinions Editor

In recent weeks, the situation in Darfur, a remote region of Sudan, has taken a turn for the worse. Dozens of men, women and children have been murdered by squads of bandits called Janjaweed that have rumored links to the Sudanese government. The recent killings make this the most violent period since 2003, when the conflict began. In the past three and a half years, more than 200,000 civilians have died and millions have been forced to leave their homes.

Washington has not been quiet on the subject of Darfur. President Bush has called the situation a genocide in which rape, murder, and pillaging are rampant. In 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “We have been doing everything we can to get the Sudanese government to act responsibly.” However, other than empty rhetoric, little has been done to stop the killings. No American troops have been deployed, and we have left the burden of ending the widescale violence in an approximately area the size of France on the shoulders of a small number of African Union troops.

Compare this reaction of the U.S. government to its reaction to the genocide that took place in Kosovo. Throughout much of the 1990s, Serbian forces under the direction of dictator Slobodan Milosevic slaughtered Bosnian Muslims. Thousands were killed. The reaction from the United States and the international community at large was one of disgust and zero tolerance. Soon after the killings started, President George Bush Sr. warned Milosevic that any attack on Kosovo would be met with force from American troops. Throughout the campaign, both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and American troops bombed Serbian cities. In 1999, President Clinton ordered American planes to bomb Belgrade. What was supposed to be a short campaign lasted 78 days. Eventually, it was western mediators that ended the conflict.

So why the extreme difference in handling the two genocides? There are a number of reasons. The first is that America is currently bogged down by conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and simply does not have the time or resources to try to address the situation in Darfur.

However, there is another implicit reason that cannot be ignored. The simple fact is that in Kosovo, it was white people that were being slaughtered, while in Darfur, the victims are black. Is this controversial? Yes. Is there any proof that race plays a major role in U.S. policy towards Darfur? No. But how can America justify a zealous, vigorous response to Milosevic’s atrocities and virtually ignore what is going on in Darfur? Almost all of the humanitarian aid that comes to Sudan from America is provided by private organizations. And while a number of human rights groups are working to bring peace to the region, the Bush administration has not budged. The fact remains that our government has done very little.

The hypocrisy is overwhelming. The fighting in the Balkans was front and center in the consciousness of America in the late 1990s. Pictures and videos of the violence were constantly on the evening news. Comparatively, Darfur is rarely mentioned by the mainstream American media. Why? Because Americans think of Europeans as an extension of ourselves, as similar people with similar lives and goals. When they are getting killed, something must be done. The Albanian Muslims that were being slaughtered lived on European soil, enough to spur the American government into action.

Darfur, on the other hand, seems like another planet to some. Civil wars in Africa, such as the recent conflicts in Somalia and Rwanda, are viewed as inevitable. Horrible events, sure, but not worth military involvement in the eyes of the American government.

Every day, more people are killed by the armed and motivated Janjaweed death squads, while air force jets bomb villages to the ground. Yet the Bush administration does nothing to pressure Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, to stop the killings. One possible reason for this is that over the past few years, officials in Khartoum have been instrumental in detaining terrorism suspects and handing them over to the United States government. Apparently, Bush does not want to jeopardize this relationship.

But tens of thousands have died, and thousands more will perish unless our government follows the lead of many of its citizens and demands action in Darfur. It is up to the U.S. government to decide if the people that are being slaughtered are the type that it deems worth saving.