Something worth fighting for

Samantha Powers has a powerful report on Darfur that both reflects the horror of what is happening there and provides history and context for the conflict.

Hilal agreed to meet with me because he wanted to clear up the impression in the West that he is a janjaweed. When I mentioned the word, Hilal, who sees himself in regal terms, scoffed at what he considers a grave insult. In Sudan, nobody ever calls himself a janjaweed. Although many Africans in Darfur apply the term to any Arab civilian who carries a gun, government officials and Darfur’s Arab-militia leaders, like Hilal, apply it only to the bandits—African and Arab—who have been hijacking and looting in Sudan’s remote areas for decades. Western diplomats use “janjaweed” more broadly, to describe the Arab militiamen who have carried out much of the pillaging, killing, and raping in Darfur. These men, who receive orders on Thuraya satellite phones, have joined up with the Sudanese Air Force and Army, killing as many as fifty thousand Darfurians and destroying nearly four hundred villages. More than a million and a half people have fled from their homes—fifty refugee camps have been established in Chad, and a hundred and fifty unofficial sites have sprung up in Sudan—but this hasn’t stopped the janjaweed. They continue to terrorize, murdering men and raping women who dare to venture outside the camps.