Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times
Posted 3/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
What's to Be Done About Darfur? Plenty
Never Again, Again?
Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life?
A Policy Of Rape
When Rapists Walk Free
What's to Be Done About Darfur? Plenty
November 29, 2005
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times
In 1915, Woodrow Wilson turned a blind eye to the Armenian genocide. In the1940's, Franklin Roosevelt refused to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz.In 1994, Bill Clinton turned away from the slaughter in Rwanda. And in 2005,President Bush is acquiescing in the first genocide of the 21st century, inDarfur.
Mr. Bush is paralyzed for the same reasons as his predecessors. There is nogreat public outcry, there are no neat solutions, we already have our handsfull, and it all seems rather distant and hopeless.
But Darfur is not hopeless. Here's what we should do.
First, we must pony up for the African Union security force. The single mostdisgraceful action the U.S. has taken was Congress's decision, with the complicityof the Bush administration, to cut out all $50 million in the current budgetto help pay for the African peacekeepers in Darfur. Shame on RepresentativeJim Kolbe of Arizona — and the White House — for facilitating genocide.
Mr. Bush needs to find $50 million fast and get it to the peacekeepers.
Second, the U.S. needs to push for an expanded security force in Darfur. TheAfrican Union force is a good start, but it lacks sufficient troops and weaponry.The most practical solution is to "blue hat" the force, making ita U.N. peacekeeping force built around the African Union core. It needs moreresources and a more robust mandate, plus contributions from NATO or at leastfrom major countries like Canada, Germany and Japan.
Third, we should impose a no-fly zone. The U.S. should warn Sudan that if itbombs civilians, then afterward we will destroy the airplanes involved.
Fourth, the House should pass the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act. Thislegislation, which would apply targeted sanctions and pressure Sudan to stopthe killing, passed the Senate unanimously but now faces an uphill strugglein the House.
Fifth, Mr. Bush should use the bully pulpit. He should talk about Darfur inhis speeches and invite survivors to the Oval Office. He should wear a green"Save Darfur" bracelet — or how about getting a Darfur lawnsign for the White House? (Both are available, along with ideas for action,from www.savedarfur.org.) He can call Hosni Mubarak and other Arab and Africanleaders and ask them to visit Darfur. He can call on China to stop underwritingthis genocide.
Sixth, President Bush and Kofi Annan should jointly appoint a special envoyto negotiate with tribal sheiks. Colin Powell or James Baker III would be idealin working with the sheiks and other parties to hammer out a peace deal. Theenvoy would choose a Sudanese chief of staff like Dr. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, aleading Sudanese human rights activist who has been pushing just such a planwith the help of Human Rights First.
So far, peace negotiations have failed because they center on two groups thatare partly composed of recalcitrant thugs: the government and the increasinglysplintered rebels. But Darfur has a traditional system of conflict resolutionbased on tribal sheiks, and it's crucial to bring those sheiks into the process.
Ordinary readers can push for all these moves. Before he died, Senator PaulSimon said that if only 100 people in each Congressional district had demandeda stop to the Rwandan genocide, that effort would have generated a determinationto stop it. But Americans didn't write such letters to their members of Congressthen, and they're not writing them now.
Finding the right policy tools to confront genocide is an excruciating challenge,but it's not the biggest problem. The hardest thing to find is the politicalwill.
For all my criticisms of Mr. Bush, he has sent tons of humanitarian aid, andhis deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, has traveled to Darfur fourtimes this year. But far more needs to be done.
As Simon Deng, a Sudanese activist living in the U.S., puts it: "Tellme why we have Milosevic and Saddam Hussein on trial for their crimes, but wedo nothing in Sudan. Why not just let all the war criminals go. When it comesto black people being slaughtered, do we look the other way?"
Put aside for a moment the question of whether Mr. Bush misled the nation onW.M.D. in Iraq. It's just as important to ask whether he was truthful when hedeclared in his second inaugural address, "All who live in tyranny andhopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, orexcuse your oppressors."
Mr. Bush, so far that has been a ringing falsehood — but, please, makeit true.
Never Again, Again?
November 20, 2005
By Nicholas D. Kristoff
The New York Times
So who killed 2-year-old Zahra Abdullah for belonging to the Fur tribe?
At one level, the answer is simple: The murderers were members of the janjaweedmilitia that stormed into this mud-brick village in the South Darfur regionat dawn four weeks ago on horses, camels and trucks. Zahra's mother, FatimaOmar Adam, woke to gunfire and smoke and knew at once what was happening.
She jumped up from her sleeping mat and put Zahra on her back, then grabbedthe hands of her two older children and raced out of her thatch-roof hut withher husband.
Some of the marauders were right outside. They yanked Zahra from Ms. Fatima'sback and began bludgeoning her on the ground in front of her shrieking motherand sister. Then the men began beating Ms. Fatima and the other two children,so she grabbed them and fled — and the men returned to beating the lifeout of Zahra.
At another level, responsibility belongs to the Sudanese government, whicharmed the janjaweed and gave them license to slaughter and rape members of severalAfrican tribes, including the Fur.
Then some responsibility attaches to the rebels in Darfur. They claim to berepresenting the tribes being ethnically cleansed, but they have been fightingeach other instead of negotiating a peace with the government that would endthe bloodbath.
And finally, responsibility belongs to the international community —to you and me — for acquiescing in yet another genocide.
Tama is just the latest of many hundreds of villages that have been methodicallydestroyed in the killing fields of Darfur over the last two years. Ms. Fatimasat on the ground and told me her story — which was confirmed by othereyewitnesses — in a dull, choked monotone, as she described her guiltat leaving her child to die.
"Zahra was on the ground, and they were beating her with sticks, but Iran away," she said. Her 4-year-old son, Adam, was also beaten badly butsurvived. A 9-year-old daughter, Khadija, has only minor injuries but she toldme that she had constant nightmares about the janjaweed.
At least Ms. Fatima knows what happened to her daughter. A neighbor, AishaYagoub Abdurahman, is beside herself because she says she saw her 10-year-oldson Adil carried off by the janjaweed. He is still missing, and everyone knowsthat the janjaweed regularly enslave children like him, using them as servantsor sexual playthings. In all, 37 people were killed in Tama, and another 12are missing.
The survivors fled five miles to another village that had been abandoned afterbeing attacked by the janjaweed a year earlier. Now the survivors are terrified,and they surrounded me to ask for advice about how to stay alive.
None of them dared accompany me back to Tama, which is an eerie ghost town,doors hanging off hinges and pots and sandals strewn about. The only inhabitantsI saw in Tama were camels, which are now using the village as a pasture —and which the villagers say belong to the janjaweed. On the road back, I sawa group of six janjaweed, one displaying his rifle.
Darfur is just the latest chapter in a sorry history of repeated inaction inthe face of genocide, from that of Armenians, through the Holocaust, to theslaughter of Cambodians, Bosnians and Rwandans. If we had acted more resolutelylast year, then Zahra would probably still be alive.
Attacks on villages like Tama occur regularly. Over the last week, one tribecalled the Falata, backed and armed by the Sudanese government, has burned villagesbelonging to the Masalit tribe south of here. Dozens of bodies are said to belying unclaimed on the ground.
President Bush, where are you? You emphasize your willingness to speak bluntlyabout evil, but you barely let the word Darfur pass your lips. The central lessonof the history of genocide is that the essential starting point of any responseis to bellow moral outrage — but instead, Mr. President, you're whispering.
In a later column, I'll talk more specifically about actions we should take,and it's true that this is a complex mess without easy solutions. But for starterswe need a dose of moral clarity. For all the myriad complexities of Darfur,what history will remember is that this is where little girls were bashed todeath in front of their parents because of their tribe — and because theworld couldn't be bothered to notice.
Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life?
October 23, 2005
By Nicholas D. Kristoff
The New York Times
When I walked into the maternity hospital here, I wished that President Bushwere with me.
A 37-year-old woman was lying on a stretcher, groaning from labor pains andwracked by convulsions. She was losing her eyesight and seemed about to slipinto a coma from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy that kills 50,000 womena year in the developing world. Beneath her, cockroaches skittered across thefloor.
"We're just calling for her husband," said Dr. Obende Kayode, anobstetrician. "When he provides the drugs and surgical materials, we cando the operation," a Caesarean section.
Dr. Kayode explained that before any surgery can begin, the patient or familymembers must pay $42 for a surgical kit with bandages, surgical thread and antibiotics.
In this case, the woman — a mother of six named Ramatou Issoufou —was lucky. Her husband was able to round up the sum quickly, without havingto sell any goats. Moreover, this maternity hospital had been equipped by theU.N. Population Fund — and that's why I wished Mr. Bush were with me.Last month, Mr. Bush again withheld all U.S. funds from the U.N. PopulationFund.
The Population Fund promotes modern contraception, which is practiced by only4 percent of women in Niger, and safe childbirth. But it has the money to assistonly a few areas of Niger, and Mrs. Issoufou was blessed to live in one of them.
Nurses wheeled her into the operating theater, scrubbed her belly and administereda spinal anesthetic. Then Dr. Kayode cut open her abdomen and reached insideto pull out a healthy 6-pound, 6-ounce boy. (A video of the operation can beseen at www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
After removing the placenta, Dr. Kayode stitched up Mrs. Issoufou. Her convulsionspassed, and it was clear that she and the baby would survive. For all the criticismheaped on the U.N., these were two more lives saved by the U.N. Population Fund— no thanks to the Bush administration.
Even when they don't die, mothers often suffer horrific childbirth injuries.In the town of Goure, a 20-year-old woman named Fathi Ali was lying listlesslyon a cot, leaking urine. After she was in labor for three days, her mother andher aunt had put her on a camel and led her 40 miles across the desert to aclinic — but midway in the journey the baby was stillborn and she suffereda fistula, an internal injury that leaves her incontinent.
Village women are the least powerful people on earth. That's why more than500,000 women die every year worldwide in pregnancy — and why we in theWest should focus more aid on preventing such deaths in poor countries.
Mr. Bush and other conservatives have blocked funds for the U.N. PopulationFund because they're concerned about its involvement in China. They're rightto be appalled by forced sterilizations and abortions in China, and they havethe best of intentions. But they're wrong to blame the Population Fund, whichhas been pushing China to ease the coercion — and in any case the solutionisn't to let African women die. (Two American women have started a wonderfulgrass-roots organization that seeks to make up for the Bush cuts with privatedonations; its website is www.34millionfriends.org.)
After watching Dr. Kayode save the life of Mrs. Issoufou and her baby, I wasready to drop out of journalism and sign up for medical school. But places likeNiger need not just doctors, but resources.
Pregnant women die constantly here because they can't afford treatment costingjust a few dollars. Sometimes the doctors and nurses reach into their own pocketsto help a patient, but they can't do so every time.
"It depends on the mood," Dr. Kayode said. "If the [staff] feelthey can't pay out again, then you just wait and watch. And sometimes she dies."
A few days earlier, a pregnant woman had arrived with a dangerously high bloodpressure of 250 over 130; it was her 12th pregnancy. Dr. Kayode prescribed amedicine called Clonidine for the hypertension, but she did not have the $13to buy it. Nor could she afford $42 for a Caesarean that she needed.
During childbirth, right here in this hospital, she hemorrhaged and bled todeath.
Somewhere in the world, a pregnant woman dies like that about once a minute,often leaving a handful of orphans behind. Call me naive, but I think that ifMr. Bush came here and saw women dying as a consequence of his confused policy,he would relent. This can't be what he wants — or what America standsfor.
A Policy Of Rape
June 5, 2005
By Nicholas D. Kristoff
The New York Times
All countries have rapes, of course. But here in the refugee shantytowns ofDarfur, the horrific stories that young women whisper are not of random criminalitybut of a systematic campaign of rape to terrorize civilians and drive them from'Arab lands' — a policy of rape.
One measure of the international community's hypocrisy is that the world isbarely bothering to protest. More than two years after the genocide in Darfurbegan, the women of Kalma Camp — a teeming squatter's camp of 110,000people driven from their burned villages — still face the risk of gangrape every single day as they go out looking for firewood.
Nemat, a 21-year-old, told me that she left the camp with three friends toget firewood to cook with. In the early afternoon a group of men in uniformscaught and gang-raped her.
"They said, 'You are black people. We want to wipe you out,'" Nematrecalled. After the attack, Nemat was too injured to walk, but her relativesfound her and carried her back to camp on a donkey.
A neighbor, Toma, 34, said she heard similar comments from seven men in policeuniforms who raped her. "They said, 'We want to finish you people off,'" she recalled.
Sometimes the women simply vanish. A young mother named Asha cried as she toldhow she and her four sisters were chased down by a Janjaweed militia; she escapedbut all her sisters were caught.
"To this day, I don't know if they are alive or dead," she sobbed.Then she acknowledged that she had another reason for grief: a Janjaweed militiahad also murdered her husband 23 days earlier.
Gang rape is terrifying anywhere, but particularly so here. Women who are rapedhere are often ostracized for life, even forced to build their own huts andlive by themselves. In addition, most girls in Darfur undergo an extreme formof genital cutting called infibulation that often ends with a midwife stitchingthe vagina shut with a thread made of wild thorns. This stitching and the scartissue make sexual assault a particularly violent act, and the resulting injuriesincrease the risk of H.I.V. transmission.
Sudan has refused to allow aid groups to bring into Darfur more rape kits thatinclude medication that reduces the risk of infection from H.I.V.
The government has also imprisoned rape victims who became pregnant, for adultery.Even those who simply seek medical help are harassed and humiliated.
On March 26, a 17-year-old student named Hawa went to a French-run clinic inKalma and reported that she had been raped. A French midwife examined her andconfirmed that she was bleeding and had been raped.
But an informer in the clinic alerted the police, who barged in and —over the determined protests of two Frenchwomen — carried Hawa off toa police hospital, where she was chained to a cot by one leg and one arm. Adoctor there declared that she had not been raped after all, and Hawa was thenimprisoned for a couple of days. The authorities are now proposing that shebe charged with submitting false information.
The attacks are sometimes purely about humiliation. Some women are raped withsticks that tear apart their insides, leaving them constantly trickling urine.One Sudanese woman working for a European aid organization was raped with abayonet.
Doctors Without Borders issued an excellent report in March noting that italone treated almost 500 rapes in a four-and-a-half-month period. Sudan finallyreacted to the report a few days ago — by arresting an Englishman anda Dutchman working for Doctors Without Borders.
Those women who spoke to me risked arrest and lifelong shame by telling theirstories. Their courage should be an inspiration to us — and above all,to President Bush — to speak out. Mr. Bush finally let the word Darfurpass his lips on Wednesday, after 142 days of silence, but only during a photoop. Such silence amounts to acquiescence, for this policy of rape flourishesonly because it is ignored.
I'm still chilled by the matter-of-fact explanation I received as to why itis women who collect firewood, even though they're the ones who are raped. Thereason is an indication of how utterly we are failing the people of Darfur,two years into the first genocide of the 21st century.
"It's simple," one woman here explained. "When the men go out,they're killed. The women are only raped."
When Rapists Walk Free
March 5, 2005
By Nicholas D. Kristoff
The New York Times
One of the gutsiest people on earth is Mukhtaran Bibi. And after this week,she'll need that courage just to survive.
Mukhtaran, a tall, slim young woman who never attended school as a child, livesin a poor and remote village in the Punjab area of Pakistan. As part of a villagedispute in 2002, a tribal council decided to punish her family by sentencingher to be gang-raped. She begged and cried, but four of her neighbors immediatelystripped her and carried out the sentence. Then her tormenters made her walkhome naked while her father tried to shield her from the eyes of 300 villagers.
Mukhtaran was meant to be so shamed that she would commit suicide. But in asociety where women are supposed to be soft and helpless, she proved indescribablytough, and she found the courage to live. She demanded the prosecution of herattackers, and six were sent to death row.
She received $8,300 in compensation and used it to start two schools in thevillage, one for boys and one for girls, because she feels that education isthe best way to change attitudes like those that led to the attack on her. Illiterateherself, she then enrolled in her own elementary school.
I visited Mukhtaran in her village in September and wrote a column about her.Readers responded with an avalanche of mail, including 1,300 donations for Mukhtarantotaling $133,000.
The money arrived just in time, for Mukhtaran's schools had run out of funds.She had sold her family's cow to keep them open because she believes so passionatelyin the redemptive power of education.
Now that cash from readers has put the schools on a sound financial footingagain. And Mercy Corps, a first-rate American aid group already active in Pakistan,has agreed to assist Mukhtaran in spending the money wisely. The next step willbe to start an ambulance service for the area so sick or injured villagers canget to a hospital.
Down the road, Mukhtaran says, she will try to start her own aid group to battlehonor killings. And even though she lives in a remote village without electricity,she has galvanized her supporters to launch a Web site: www.mukhtarmai.com.(Although her legal name is Mukhtaran Bibi, she is known in the Pakistani pressby a variant, Mukhtar Mai).
Until two days ago, she was thriving. Then — disaster.
A Pakistani court overturned the death sentences of all six men convicted inthe attack on her and ordered five of them freed. They are her neighbors andwill be living alongside her. Mukhtaran was in the courthouse and collapsedin tears, fearful of the risk this brings to her family.
"Yes, there is danger," she said by telephone afterward. "Weare afraid for our lives, but we will face whatever fate brings for us."
Mukhtaran, not the kind of woman to squander money on herself by flying, evenwhen she has access to $133,000, took an exhausting 12-hour bus ride to Islamabadyesterday to appeal to the Supreme Court. Mercy Corps will help keep her ina safe location, and those donations from readers may keep her alive for thetime being. But for the long term, Mukhtaran has always said she wants to stayin her village, whatever the risk, because that's where she can make the mostdifference.
I had planned to be in Pakistan this week to write a follow-up column aboutMukhtaran. But after a month's wait, the Pakistani government has refused togive me a visa, presumably out of fear that I would write more about Pakistaninuclear peddling. (Hmm, a good idea.)
Mukhtaran's life illuminates what will be the central moral challenge of thiscentury, the brutality that is the lot of so many women and girls in poor countries.For starters, because of inattention to maternal health, a woman dies in childbirthin the developing world every minute.
In Pakistan, if a woman reports a rape, four Muslim men must generally actas witnesses before she can prove her case. Otherwise, she risks being chargedwith fornication or adultery — and suffering a public whipping and longimprisonment.
Mukhtaran is a hero. She suffered what in her society was the most extremeshame imaginable — and emerged as a symbol of virtue. She has taken asordid story of perennial poverty, gang rape and judicial brutality and inspiredus with her faith in the power of education — and her hope.