Merchant of Death
Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

Blood from Stones

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A Small But Important Step on Darfur
The International Criminal Court took the small but important step of naming names in the Darfur atrocities, homing in on the inner circle of president Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The ICC outlines the clear lines of responsibility of senior government officials in the creation and direction of the _janjaweed_ militias now famous for ravaging their own people, raping women and burning desolate huts in a genocidal effort of ethnic cleansing.

It is not enough, but the name and shame campaign is at least a step. Perhaps the West should go further in naming and shaming, now that the government, while long known to be responsible, is finally being called to some modest account.

Sudan is an Islamic republic, run by leaders of the international Muslim Brotherhood. The Darfur atrocities are as much a religious campaign as it is ethnic. Yet no one asks what, in the name of Allah, gives a government of self-proclaimed Islamists, the right, within its own religious context, to carry out such atrocities?

Mentioning the ties of the Sudanese leadership to radical Islamists, and their support for genocide within their own borders, is, for unfathomable reasons, unmentionable in polite policy circles. Yet it is fundamental to what is happening there.

Sudanese leaders sit on the boards of the large Islamist financial institutions, are welcomed around the Islamic world and host meetings of the international Muslim Brotherhood. They are not outcasts, pariahs or even questioned among their own.

Government officials, who openly define their personal and public lives, as Islamists, are perpetrating, aiding, abetting, protecting, arming, supplying Islamist foot soldiers in a war against unarmed civilians. It is genocide.

If it were a Christian theocracy doing this that, claiming to be ruling on biblical principles, the my condemnation would be the same and the world would be in an uproar over the Crusaders rise.

Yet the Islamic world, where almost every government claims the same principles as the _Iqwan_ leadership of Sudan, has done NOTHING to stop the genocide. The rest of the world has done little enough. They have done nothing but condone the actions with their silence.

No condemnation of a group acting in the name of their God, no secret talks, no pressure of any sort. Does that strike only me as other-worldly?

It is time to stop the partial condemnations of the Sudanese Islamist leaders, and talk about what is really happening there, and why. The Stop Darfur campaigns, while commendable, need to broaden their efforts.

The Bush administration does not have the attention span or stomach for it. Mentioning the Islamist aspect of the conflict is still not polite. But it is real, and the atrocities cannot be stopped until that element is acknowledged and dealt with, preferably by some of the great Muslim majority that must hate to see these atrocities done in their name.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
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