Sudan: July 24, 2004

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Britain and Australia have offered to send over 5,000 troops (mostly British) to Sudan. But the Arab world has united behind Sudan to prevent any peacekeeping, or even blaming the Sudanese government for the violence in Darfur. While the victims in Darfur are Moslems, they are also black Africans, and Arabs have, for centuries, treated black Africans with disdain and cruelty. Moreover, most of the criticism of Sudan is coming from Europe and North America, which to Arabs means infidels again trying to interfere in Islamic affairs. Among the Arab population in general, the idea of driving a million black African farmers from their land so that Arab nomads will have more pastures for their herds, makes perfect sense. Some Arab pundits and media outlets are pointing out the hypocrisy of all this, but are, for the moment, drowned out by the calls for Islamic unity and support of Sudanese Arabs. Note that nearly all Sudanese are either black African or mixed Egyptian, or Arab and black African. 

In fact, the gunmen of the "Arab tribes" look pretty much like black Africans, and often appear little different from their victims. The nomadic tribes were originally Arabs, centuries ago, but since that time, there has been a lot of  intermarriage (plus rape and slavery) to mix up the gene pool. But the Arab tribes continued to identify themselves as Arabs, and continued to speak Arab. As is often the case, it's what comes out of your mouth that defines you, not what your face looks like. The government, it appears, has been recruiting Arab tribesmen for $116 a month, plus all the loot they could take from raided villages, to make wake war on three black Sudanese tribes that had produced several groups of rebels. What were they rebelling against? Mainly poor treatment of their tribes by the government.

 

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