Darfur is for Lovers
Darfur is for Lovers
I’ve been writing about the atrocities of the janjaweed (more invasive than dandelions, more toxic than ragweed) since most of you were in short pants, so don’t you dare lecture me about the poor, starving Darfurians. But if you want to actually help the people there–instead of just putting another bumper sticker next to your Free Tibet and Chimpeach stickers–what are you planning to do about it? Don’t look to the pack o’ pussies:
The UN’s World Food Program is cutting in half the emergency food rations it provides to about 3 million people in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan because of a ‘’severe lack of funding,” especially from the wealthy nations of Europe, officials said yesterday.
The cuts, scheduled to begin in May, could mean the death of tens of thousands of people and bare subsistence for hundreds of thousands of other victims of the Darfur conflict.
The United Nations will reduce the present feeding rations in Darfur from 2,100 calories a day to 1,050 calories, dramatically reducing portions of bread, fortified foods, legumes, cooking oil, sugar, and salt, World Food Program executive director James Morris said at a news conference in Geneva. The reduced portions equal about half the minimum daily calories necessary to maintain health in an adult, according to relief agencies.
The cut must be made, he said, because, despite urgent appeals for assistance and growing media attention on the Darfur crisis, national governments have donated just $238 million this year — about one third of the $746 million the UN says is needed for the hungry of Darfur and displaced people elsewhere in Sudan.
”This is a scandalous step to take in a desperate time,” said World Food Program spokeswoman Caroline Hurford by telephone from the organization’s headquarters in Rome. ”People don’t have enough to eat. But we have no choice.”
Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish Relief Services, who is a leader of efforts in the United States to increase aid to victims in Darfur, said the food program is loudly publicizing the planned food ration cuts to put pressure on European governments to fulfill their commitments.
Nevertheless, ”it is not crying wolf, because people are definitely going to die,” Messinger said in a telephone interview from New York. ”This is going to become genocide by famine.”
The crisis in Darfur began in 2003 when African Muslim tribes rebelled against the Sudanese government, seeking more autonomy. Arab militias called ”janjaweed,” apparently supported by the government, launched a murderous campaign against civilians, driving millions into refugee camps. Sudan denies backing the militias. President Bush and the US Congress have declared the campaign to be a genocide.
That’s right, this President, whom the Left is so quick to condemn as Hitler reincarnated, calls genocide “genocide”, while wealthy European nations, whom the Left look to with hearts in their eyes, call it “scandalous.”
And can someone tell me why George Clooney is so enamored of intervention in Darfur and so contemptuous of the liberation of Iraq? You can be for or agin’ both, but not for one and against the other. Will he please explain to us the difference between Americans dying in Sudan from Americans dying in Iraq?